Wanted
by HardlyFatal
Summary: Brienne needs a handsome, exciting pretend husband to fend off her friend's plan to shove her into an arranged marriage. Jaime's getting tired of hunting bounties, but that's a day in the park compared to the trouble this enormous madwoman is causing him. Or: the author can't stop plugging these two into weird scenarios. Send help.
1. Chapter 1

Brienne took a sip of the rapidly cooling cup of coffee at her elbow, grimaced at the sharp prickle of it on her tongue, and replaced it on the saucer. No amount of sugar and cream could improve that taste. She preferred tea, but the Dornish were wild for coffee and she'd only garnered odd looks when requesting it, so had given up. She pushed the cup to the side and flattened one hand on each of the sheets of paper spread before her on the table. On the left, a list of male names. On the right, the letter from her oldest and dearest friend that had necessitated the creation of said list, received three weeks ago.

_Dearest Brienne,_ read the letter, _I am delighted to share that I am expecting a child. Sandor has declared a wish for his heir to be born at Clegane Keep. He has not been there in decades but the arrival of his first child has instilled in him a nostalgia for his home, his birthright. Now that his brother has passed on, he can enjoy it without having to engage in any altercations. We shall be sailing past Tarth from White Harbor to Lannisport and intend to stop there for at least several days' visit._

_A friend will be accompanying us, a fellow from beyond the wall by the name of Tormund Giantsbane. A fearsome name, I know, but for all his brash exterior, he is the finest of men and I am confident you will find his company as pleasant as we do._

_Expect us within a month of this letter, my dear friend._

_Sansa Clegane_

Brienne sighed. She knew what Sansa meant; it had meant the same every other time she'd taken it upon herself to introduce Brienne to a man. For Sansa, hope sprang eternal that her closest friend would make as brilliant and successful a match as she herself had with her beloved Sandor. Undeterred in spite of two previous catastrophes, Sansa was clearly going to try again, this time with a man from so far afield, so wild-sounding, that even Brienne would seem a sound alternative to whatever might be available to him in his own primitive home.

"His choices up there are between bears and Thenns," she muttered. "Even I compare favorably to bears and Thenns."

"Sorry, ser?" inquired the harried waitress as she threaded a path between the tables.

Brienne sighed again. "Nothing," she said. "Do you have some tea, instead?"

The girl blinked, realizing that was no ser she spoke to. After her surprise faded, she grimaced. "No... miss, sorry. Haven't had tea come through Hellholt in months."

"Then this will be fine," said Brienne politely, and the waitress went off with a nod.

Brienne bent over the other sheet of paper, carefully compiled after conversing with a variety of fancy ladies plying their wares, not only those in Tarth's single pillow house but several others she'd gone to, as well, in Storm's End.

Her mouth quirked in a smile, quickly repressed, at the reaction her arrival had provoked. Not at Tarth's brothel, no, because she was related to half the girls working there, and known by all of them, and it was nothing for her to pop in to speak to one or another of them of a day. _Muriel, how's your mother? Her gout any better? Patrice, your father left his hammer at the Hall, yesterday, bring it home to him? There's a dear._

But the pillow house in Storm's End? She'd caused quite an uproar as the girls clamored to be her particular friend for the evening一 it seemed some women preferred being with other females in an intimate fashion, something Brienne had not even realized was possible. And apparently Brienne's particular charms were very much in demand by various of these women.

She'd refused, of course, to the disappointment of several, but remained to plumb their opinions for who they thought the most dashing, romantic, exciting man in Westeros might be. The consensus was that it should be a bounty hunter, one of those brave stalwarts roaming the continent's last unpoliced regions for outlaws and hoodlums.

Serial stories about them were fixtures in all the major newspapers, and one bounty hunter in particular had caught the minds and hearts of many... or at least many in Storm's End's most popular fancy house. He had no fewer than three two-stag novels written about his exploits, all of them dog-eared and worn after being traded about by the girls so avidly.

But there were others, as well, which Brienne counted as fortunate, because what if her first pick refused? And so she compiled a list. It started out strong, she felt, and weakened as it went along. The first gentleman named was her preference, to be sure; she'd heard surprising things about him, such as how, for all his immense talent with a gun, he seemed to hate to actually _use _one, preferring to solve the disputes for which he was hired by talking instead of shooting.

He was also said to be impossibly charming with the ladies and kind even to children and animals. Brienne had wondered, as she made the list, why he'd go into the gunslinging business at all, with such talents at his fingertips. If he were as handsome as they said, he could have the world on its knees before him. Why slum around Dorne earning bounties?

A clatter of hooves outside drew her attention; Brienne peered through the smudged window to see two horses trotting past the hotel, one with a man riding normally and the other bearing a fellow slung over its back, trussed up like a Sevenmas goose. Upon her arrival in Hellholt, Brienne had made the acquaintance of the nice ladies at the saloon down the street, just to see what their opinion might be of her prime candidate, since they actually had first-person knowledge of him.

To a one, they'd all said Mr. Jaime Lannister was a fine figure of a man. One named Ros had looked especially appreciative, if her slow, heavy-lidded smile was anything to judge by. Ros said that Mr. Lannister had ridden out a few days earlier intent on yet another bounty, so this must have been him returning.

Brienne's palms dampened in anxiety over what she was about to do. She dried them against the cloth of her split skirt, her one concession to feminine attire, feeling she should at least make a nominal effort if she were to accomplish what she hoped.

She waited until she saw his distinctive dark green jacket again, this time leaving the jail一 where presumably he'd left his criminal一 to amble across the dusty street toward the boarding house. She stood, settled her bill with the waitress, and followed.

A rusty bell tinkled overhead as she entered the boarding house. Brienne stood in the threshold uncertainly, not sure what she was waiting for, when an older woman appeared at the end of the long hallway stretching before her, drying her hands on her apron.

"Yes?" the woman said, brisk but not unkind.

"I'd like to speak with Mr. Lannister," said Brienne. When the woman's eyebrows lifted, Brienne hurried to add, "On a matter of business."

The woman in no way looked convinced, but she nodded toward a doorway, saying, "Have a seat in the parlor. I'll get him."

Brienne entered the parlor but was too jittery to sit, instead running her fingertips over the fussy lace-edged doilies under the lamps and vases and studying the porcelain figurines strewn about in an attempt to bring a homey atmosphere to the dingy surroundings.

"Ah, so that's what she meant," said a male voice from behind her, and Brienne spun around to face the speaker.

Then she had her first close-up glimpse of his face, and dropped the figurine she'd been fondling.

.

* * *

.

Jaime was feeling pleased with himself; another successful bounty hauled in, and not a bullet spent on it. He stripped off, then dipped a washcloth in the basin and had a good scrub-down to refresh himself after a long, dusty ride back to town. He splashed water on his face and ran his wet hands through his hair, his mind on the fat stack of bills to be provided by Sheriff Bronn in payment for bringing in Rorge.

Not for the first time, he considered saving it, living frugally, getting himself a place he could live permanently. It was hard, living on the road, and not getting easier as the days kept passing. More often than he'd like, when sleeping rough on the trail of a bounty, he woke from his bedroll out in the bush and found a twinge in his back or a crick in his neck that no amount of stretching could ease, leaving him sore the rest of the day. And what he'd been finding in his beard, of late, had passed the point of being 'light blond', as he'd been telling himself for a year or two; it was now undeniably, unavoidably _gray_.

But his reflexes were as sharp, and his senses as acute, as they'd always been, and that was the important thing. No one could sneak up on him; no one could out-draw him. The day he felt he might actually lose a gunfight was the day he got out of the business; he liked the excitement of his life, but he liked his skin nice and whole and free of bullet holes even more.

So Jaime had a few more years of slinging his gun, at least. He'd worry about what came after, after.

He pulled on fresh clothes, making a mental note to tell Miz Uller, proprietress of the establishment, that he'd need her to do laundry soon. He was just tugging his jacket back on, intent on a trip to the saloon to see what company could be found for the night, when a knock came at the door. He tugged it open to find her standing there, as if she'd read his mind.

"You've got a visitor," she said without preamble.

He quirked a brow. "Who?"

"A woman," she replied. "I think."

"You _think_?"

"You'll see what I mean." She shrugged. "And give me them dirty clothes. I can smell 'em all the way out in the hall."

Jaime grinned. "I don't doubt it," he said. "I wore 'em since I left town three days ago."

She only rolled her eyes, well-accustomed to the hard ways of men when they lived rough, and accepted the filthy bundle he handed her. She turned left and he turned right, making his way to the parlor, eager to make the acquaintance of the woman一 or not一 who had come to see him. If it was a woman, he was very intrigued; Miz Uller wouldn't have let her in if she were one of the saloon girls, and she'd have said if it were one of the respectable ladies of Hellholt, so it must be a stranger.

He stopped in the doorway to the parlor and there she... he?... was. Tall as Jaime was, and built sturdy, dressed in a man's jacket and with a man's hat in the hand not holding Miz Uller's little china shepherdess. When she took a step to replace the figurine and pick up another, he realized she wasn't even wearing a skirt, but very full trousers. She turned and he took note of her rather battered profile, boasting a nose that had seen more than one break, a deep brow, full lips, and a strong chin. Ugly she was, but in spite of it, still recognizably feminine. Or at least female.

"Ah, so that's what she meant," he murmured.

The woman spun around, her eyes rounding in shock, and the shepherdess dropped from her grip.

Jaime employed his famously speedy reflexes and was across the room, figurine in hand, before it was even halfway to the floor.

"Ah," she said faintly, "thank you."

"Miz Uller'd hate to lose her favorite shepherdess," he quipped, replacing it on the fireplace mantle where it belonged. "Who do I have the honor of addressing, ma'am?"

She straightened and threw her shoulders back as if expecting a regimental inspection or steeling herself for leaping into the breach, and Jaime had to work at keeping his lips in a straight line. She struck him as the kind to get tetchy if she felt made fun of.

"My name is Brienne Duncan," she said, putting out her hand to shake as a man would.

Jaime could have just shaken it, but when did he ever take the easy or simple path? He reached out his own hand, but instead of giving hers a firm-and-brief grip as this Brienne Duncan intended, he lifted it to his lips and brushed them over the rough, reddened knuckles. She gasped and snatched her hand back like he'd set it on fire.

Now he couldn't help but grin. "And what can I do for you, Miss Duncan?"

She eyed him warily, cupping the kissed hand in the other as if nursing a wound. "I would like to hire you."

"Oh?" Rather what he'd expected, then. "Got outlaws needing rousting from your land? A dispute over water rights?"

A tide of pink rose in her face, making her glow like a peony. It made the blue of her eyes stand out vividly, and he entertained a moment's wonder that a face like that could hold eyes which, he suspected, might be the prettiest he'd ever seen.

"I would like to hire you," she repeated, then gulped as she fortified her strength to say something apparently very daring, "to be my husband."


	2. Chapter 2

Jaime Lannister blinked vivid green eyes at her, then frowned. "Come again?"

Brienne gulped, sinking to the ratty wing chair, and repeated herself. _Mercy, but he was a looker._ She'd heard so, of course— that was why he was the first name on her list. All the working ladies in all the saloons she'd visited in her travels from Tarth to Hellholt had named him the most dashing, exciting, and handsome bounty hunter in all of Westeros.

He was renowned for his skill, both professional and recreational, from one end of the territory to the other. Women wanted him, and men wanted to _be_ him. If she could manage to convince him to participate in her farce... she'd buy herself at least another few years before Sansa would harass her again.

"That's what I thought you said." He took his time withdrawing and lighting a cheroot, taking a pull and squinting at her through the wisp of smoke rising to the ceiling. "Unless you've been seized by a sudden passion for me... which is possible, but you don't seem the type to be taken by flights of romantic fancy." He surveyed her from top to toe, leaving her feeling positively scoured by his leisurely gaze. "Suppose you explain why?"

The cigar smelled heavenly, a warm, sweet, heavy scent that permeated the room, giving it a sense of false intimacy. Brienne steeled herself against it, and banished the insidious little thought that he would likely smell similar, and how nice it might be to bury her nose against his strong, tanned throat.

"I need you to be my husband for just a few weeks," she clarified stiffly. He didn't reply, didn't move a muscle, so she continued. "I know what you must be thinking, that I am so unappealing that I must hire a man for the job. Please be assured that I would not expect any... intimate... services from you, nor even your company outside of a few select... scenes, I suppose you could call them."

He quirked a tiny grin at that, revealing— good heavens— _dimples_. How did women retain their senses around him? Or did they just... not?

"All that hard work, and not even a little bonus?" he murmured, the low, honeyed tone of his voice setting something alight in her belly. _Oh, dear._ This might not be such a good idea, after all.

"I have no illusions about my appearance and my appeal," she made herself say, incapable of being dishonest, at least with herself. "I'd like to have a husband and children, one day."

The tiny grin became a smirk, as if he just knew he was irresistible and wouldn't mind providing her with a little charity, and it turned the warm glow he'd lit within her to a hard little burning coal of anger. His self-satisfied confidence threw into worse relief how very discomposed she felt.

"But if I _were_ actually looking for a husband, it certainly wouldn't be an aging gunslinger with no reliable means of support and the beginnings of a paunch."

At her last words, he straightened from his slouch in the doorway and visibly sucked in his (flat, absolutely not-paunchy) stomach. She felt a moment's chagrin at her fib, but he was _infuriating_.

"I see," he said, all the honey gone from his voice. "Not that you've any room to talk— your face could crack every mirror in town— but would you mind explaining what you need an aging, paunchy gunslinger for, then, if not to sling his gun... either of them?"

Brienne felt her face color. "I'm not sure what to explain first. I... I was told you were the handsomest man in Dorne, possibly all of Westeros, by a landslide."

He relaxed a fraction and shot her a smile of false modesty. "People talk a lot," he said with an air of gracious humility.

"Personally, I don't see it." Renly Baratheon was at least his match, if not his superior, in looks, and the various Tyrells were extremely attractive, too, as were Sansa's brothers. No, Jaime Lannister had plenty of competition for the title of 'best-looking man in Westeros'. Though, she had to admit, none of them had quite set her a-quiver the way he was doing at that moment.

The smile fell off his face. His hand froze, cheroot paused in mid-air.

"That so?" he asked flatly.

"Too much sun is turning your skin leathery, and you're clearly getting up there in age, though I'll admit the silver in your beard and at your temples makes you seem distinguished in a way you likely don't deserve."

She'd said it to make sure he understood she was immune to his blandishments, and perhaps to convince herself, as well, because despite his arrogance he was entirely too appealing for her peace of mind.

But when he stared at her a long, fraught moment, she realized her error. This was the face a hundred men had seen just before breathing their last and she regretted her hasty words. There was something about this Jaime Lannister that made her usual good temper and the strict lessons of her septa fall by the wayside.

Fortunately, he'd left his gun belt off, and she was confident that if it came to a grapple, she could take him. She was strong enough.

Then he threw back his (silvering, distinguished-_seeming_) head and laughed, the rich sound ringing off the walls.

"Well, Miss Duncan, no one can accuse you of flattery." He'd seemed to decide her unkind opinions weren't worth fretting over. Brienne was unsure if that were good or bad. "You going to explain to me this need for a temporary husband?"

They'd reached the unavoidable moment she'd hoped never to reveal to anyone, but if this were going to work... Brienne heaved a sigh and began.

.

* * *

.

"I have a very dear and close friend who is... well, if you're the handsomest man in Westeros— " here, she ran a skeptical, and very blue, eye over Jaime from head to toe with a dubious expression "—then she is the most beautiful woman. Auburn hair, hourglass figure, perfect features. She has every possible appeal the gods could grant." She paused. "Just as I do not."

He wasn't quite sure what to make of that. "You want me to kill her?" he asked, mostly joking, but it soured when she sucked in a shocked breath.

"No! She is my dearest, oldest, kindest friend!" Here, the homely woman wrung her hands in dismay, gazing down at the worn carpet. She looked so miserable he almost felt the urge to comfort her. Though he was sure any attempts to soothe her would be met with a hard right hook, and Jaime had no desire to make his nose as bent and crooked as hers.

"So what _do _you want me to do?" he asked gruffly. "How can marrying you possibly help you with this perfect friend?"

She took a deep breath. In no way did it cause a bosom to thrust out against the restraining shield of a corset in that way Jaime particularly liked; in fact, he was rather sure she wasn't even wearing a corset. And for a moment the fact that she was too flat to need one meant _nothing_ when compared to the idea that, under the cotton of her garments, she was bare, unrestricted... that he could slide his fingers between the buttons of her shirt and find nothing but warm, probably freckled, skin and tight nipples...

He hurried to sit on the lumpy chesterfield squatting nearby, the better to hide the truly alarming development in his trousers. _It's just because my visit to the saloon has been delayed by this insane meeting,_ he told himself. _Once I have an hour with Ros, I'll be fine._

"Sansa will be visiting me at my home very soon," explained Miss Duncan. "And she'll be bringing with her a man she wants to convince me to marry."

He tilted his head to the side, trying to figure her out. "But I thought you said you _wanted_ to marry, that you wanted children."

"I do!" she exclaimed, sounding frustrated. "But I want to marry a man _I_ choose, not one I'm talked into, or who is talked into marrying me. And she _could_, Mr. Lannister. Sansa could easily talk a man into marrying me. She can talk a man into doing anything, and thinking it was his idea in the first place."

He took a deep drag from his cigar, relishing the dry heat of the smoke in his mouth and lungs before exhaling.

"She sounds awful," he said flatly. He'd had his fill of manipulative women who used their looks to get their way. It was one of the reasons he preferred whores. They didn't play games, didn't toy with his mind. He knew what they wanted, they knew what he wanted, and there was no pretense between them. Good, clear honesty— that was all he wanted out of life. He'd given up hoping to find it in a woman.

...except this hideous giantess seemed to have at least her share of it, if not more than. _Hm._ Just figured he'd finally found a woman who didn't prevaricate to wring what she wanted from him, and she had to have a face that could stop every clock in the territory all at the same time.

"She's _not_," contradicted the hideous giantess, hotly defending her friend. "She's wonderful. She only wants me to be as happy as she has become, now that she's married to the love of her life. They're expecting their first child, and I think she's feeling broody. Wants everything, and everyone, settled into their own fluffy little nest."

Her face was exasperated but fond. Rarely had he seen someone so transparent with their emotions, easily admitting their affection for another. In his experience, revealing a fondness for anything or anyone just gave your enemies– or your family– something to target.

"How can being your husband for a few weeks help you with this goddess?" he asked, so fascinated by her that he forgot trying to remember to smoke. A keg of dynamite couldn't have moved him from that room.

"Not only will I already be wed, but she'll be so impressed with my husband that she'll leave off trying to matchmake for me, even after I reveal, in a year, that we have sadly parted. I'll have been so desperately heartbroken by the end of the marriage that she won't push me to remarry. I'll be free to make my own way and find someone who, unlike you, will be better-suited to be my husband."

There was an insult in there somewhere, Jaime just knew it. "And how am I ill-suited to be your husband?" he drawled, but inside felt a touch of pique; what _else_ could be wrong with him? "If I'll impress her, there must be something I do well."

"She'll find you very handsome," Miss Duncan said promptly, "and your occupation as a bounty hunter will be very exciting to her. You also appear to have some level of charm, and she is very receptive to a lively conversation. In all, you will be exactly what she wants for me."

"And what do _you_ want for you?"

"Me?" She looked surprised at the question, as if taken aback that he'd be interested enough to even ask. "I want a man who would be a good partner, a caring father. Reliable. Someone who could..." She paused, visibly drawing herself up for something unpleasant. "Someone who would, if not come to care for me, at least treat me with respect, in spite of my looks."

_Well, hell._ Standing there, big fists clenched, ugly face resigned and ashamed, she had Jaime feeling a very unwelcome tug at his heart. It wasn't her fault she wasn't attractive, any more than it was his fault that he was. Just the luck, good or bad, of the draw. He was developing a deeply conflicted opinion of her, half dislike and half... not. Puzzlingly, worryingly _not_.

"So you want me to be married to you for a few weeks, in an effort to impress your beautiful friend so much she leaves you alone?"

"Yes, exactly!" Her face lit up in pleasure that he fully understood her intentions. It was bizarrely appealing.

Jaime frowned. "But why go through with the marriage at all?" he asked. "Why not just hire any man who might suit your needs to pretend? An actor... from King's Landing, or Braavos if you want to make sure she never learns who he really is?"

Her eyes flew wide in shock. "But then it would be a _lie_!" she protested. "Not only about being my husband, but about his occupation!"

He stared at her for a full ten seconds in silence. "Are you really telling me that you're willing to go through with this crack-brained lunacy but you refuse to lie about it?"

"Not any more than absolutely necessary," she replied hotly, leaping up from her chair, quivering in indignation. "Bad enough to lie about being in l-love in the first place." She stumbled over the word, blushing furiously, as if the very idea she could care for someone— or, perhaps, that someone could care for her— were deeply humiliating. "And I plan on never actually stating that, just letting the fact that we were married speak for itself."

He said nothing, too stupefied to utter a word. It was the most ridiculous scheme he'd ever heard. She was a complete innocent, possibly the most naive woman he'd ever met. Traveling to Dorne to find a man one step up from being an outlaw for a husband, trusting he'd not harm her!

Did she not realize that, after marrying, she became her husband's property? That the second half of the five thousand dragons would be his anyway, in addition to everything else? If she had a home, possessions, valuables... it would all be his, and he knew whichever unscrupulous bounder agreed to the mad plan would take her for all she had, then leave her destitute.

She could not do this. It would be her ruin, in more ways than one.

"This is a terrible idea, ma'am," he said in his most persuasive tone, getting back to his feet. "You're putting yourself in danger. You should go back home and tell your friend to just leave you be, and then find your own man. It shouldn't be all that hard. You're ridiculously honest— don't underestimate the appeal of that. Honesty's hard to come by, in this world. And you're no looker, it's true, but your eyes..."

He gazed at them, _into_ them, feeling like he'd tripped over something and was falling. Silence fell, too, and they stared at each other for a long, fraught moment. Jaime felt on the precipice of something rash, like pulling her against him and kissing her senseless. Her eyes seemed to grow bigger and bigger, and he marveled at that until he realized it was because they were drifting closer and closer to each other, that she was only a few inches away by the time he finished speaking.

He was just about to do it, to reach for her and cover her mouth with his, when she blinked rapidly and shied back, looking like she'd just woken from a dream.

"Will you do it?" she asked, finally, her voice quiet. "I will pay you five thousand dragons— half up front, and the rest after Sansa is gone and the marriage is annulled."

The way she was looking at him... Jaime felt that ache in his chest, again, at her clear vulnerability, her hopefulness. She needed protecting, and wasn't that a hoot? A bruiser like her could probably set him on his back with one blow, and he was no slouch at brawling. Physically, she was big and strong and likely tough as nails, but inside, in her heart she was as tender as a rose petal.

The last time he'd been swayed by the plea of an attractive woman, when his desire to do her bidding had overridden his instincts to protect himself, disaster had resulted. Alarm stirred in his gut and trampled down any urges he might have felt to help this Miss Duncan. There was something dangerous about her. He had the prescient conviction that if he got involved with her in any way, he wouldn't make it out alive. Or at least not with sanity intact.

Alarm spiked to panic. He hadn't felt the urge to do anything for a woman besides fuck her in over a decade. He'd kept his heart far distant from women since leaving home and it had worked just fine for him ever since; he hadn't had a single instance of that deprived ache in his chest to be separated from his beloved, that all-encompassing need to be with her; hadn't been dependent upon anyone's approval and affection for his happiness.

He felt as if he'd had a dread disease, and been cured, and now stood at the threshold of a sickroom riddled with the same illness. One false step and he'd catch another case of it, and that way lay confusion and loss and pain, pain, pain.

This Miss Duncan had no right to stir up his memories, to muddle his feelings, to make him think about things he'd sworn off forever. No right at all. She'd up-ended his entire day with her preposterous request. He wanted her to feel as wrong-footed as he did, as unsure and awkward and exposed, and knew just how to do it.

"I'll do it," he drawled in his most obnoxious tone, and dragged a slow, insulting leer over her from head to toe and back again. "_If_ you reconsider the ban on those _intimate services_ you said you wouldn't expect of me. "

Her head jerked back in shock, as if he'd slapped her, and he exulted in her expression of dismay. Then, as if she didn't realize he was mocking her, Miss Duncan replied, very calmly, "No, thank you, ser. I may not have much to bring to a marriage, but when I do meet a man who I want to make my genuine, permanent husband, I want to at least bring him _that_."

_That_ presumably meaning her virginity, and Jaime marveled for a moment at the knowledge of her purity. His libido, only ever marginally curbed by the oddness of their conversation, perked up again; the salacious hint of her untouched state was all it needed to roar back to life. She'd never had a man; he'd be her first, her tight little cunt strangling the life out of his cock in the best way there was—

He bit back a groan and forced some semblance of normalcy to his voice when he replied, "Well, then, it seems we've hit an impasse, ma'am."

Miss Duncan watched him, unblinking, for a few moments and then offered a brisk nod, digging in the breast pocket of her mannish jacket and extracting a dragon note she extended toward him. "For your time."

The panic of earlier, only ever ebbed, not banished entirely, melted into a wonderful safe rush of anger. Did she think him a two-dragon whore, charging others for every interaction? _How dare she? _Furious at her for every word she'd said to him, every insult, he chewed on the side of his tongue and fought his temper back.

"No, ma'am," he replied tersely. "I don't sell my time. And if I did, it would be worth a damned sight more than a single dragon."

She flushed, seeming to realize she'd pushed him too far, and nodded quickly. "I wish you the best of luck at continuing to dodge bullets for many years to come, then. Thank you for your time."

She gave him no pause to formulate a reply; she left the room, shutting the door carefully behind her, and Jaime sat back down and contemplatively smoked the rest of his cigar as the anger slowly drained away. He'd insulted her, mocked her, propositioned her; he should be feeling satisfied at that moment, to the point of smugness.

Why, then, was he feeling like the worst shit in the seven kingdoms?


	3. Chapter 3

_Well, that was that. _Brienne inhaled deeply, regretting it when she got a snootful of kicked-up dust from the street, and left the boarding house behind her.

That had gone even more strangely than she'd expected it to; never in a million years had she thought he'd try to talk her out of it, seeming genuinely concerned for her. And perhaps something else, too... for a moment一 a wild, mad second一 Brienne thought he meant to _kiss_ her. They'd drawn nearer and nearer to each other as they spoke, his words sending thrills down her spine.

_I'll do it if you reconsider the ban on those intimate services._

Her breath stuttered in her chest. To have a man like that say such a thing to her, and _mean _it... he was cocky and arrogant, and too handsome by half. The fancy ladies had said he was, but the word didn't do him justice. He seemed to have a conscience, as well, and she liked that. Just not much else about him. He was far, far, _far _too vain.

_Enough mooning over it,_ Brienne scolded herself. That had been an exciting interlude, meeting not only the most famous bounty hunter in Westeros but the handsomest one, too. But it was over now, and she had to set herself back on the course of her quest. She pulled the list from her breast pocket while making her way back across the street to the hotel.

She also withdrew a pencil stub and with true regret crossed out the first name. Shame; he'd have been perfect... in more ways than one. Brienne sighed and made her way up to her room, where she took inventory of her situation and decided to make the evening train to Sunspear to meet with the next man on her list一 one Oberyn Martell一 or else she'd have to spend another night in Hellholt, and the thought did not appeal.

She'd need more money for train fare, however, so she decided to request a box dinner to take on her trip, go to the bank, and then make her way to the station to await the next train east.

At the bank, the teller did a double-take, eyes wide in surprise at the sight of her.

"Withdrawal slip, please," Brienne requested politely in spite of it. She took out just enough cash to get her to Sunspear and was tucking it into her breast pocket when a clatter behind her made her spin around.

A half-dozen men burst into the bank, pistols drawn and bandannas over their faces.

"Everyone thtay calm and quiet and thith will be over thoon," lisped one of the men, apparently their leader, while the other distributed coarse sacks to the tellers. "Fill the thackths with all your money."

And they meant _all _the money, from the bank's clientele as well as the bank itself. Brienne received an odd look at her attire, but her lack of reticule served her well for once as the grimy outlaw leader holding his sack outthrust believed her when she told him she had nothing, not expecting a woman to put her money anywhere but in her ladylike handbag.

It appeared the robbers meant what they said, that they'd leave quietly once they had what they'd come for. But one of the other customers, a young farmer by the look of him, decided he wasn't going to stand for being robbed and made a leap for one of the gunmen. It earned him a bullet in the gut, and after a disbelieving stare down at the red splotch rapidly staining his vest, he lurched toward the exit and fell through the door.

"Godthdammit!" exclaimed the leader. "Hurry up, letth get out of here!"

They snatched up the last of the valuables and turned to go, but the doors banged open. To Brienne's surprise and confusion, instead of the town's sheriff, there stood Jaime Lannister, both weapons out. Within seconds, he'd felled all but the leader and was just taking aim at him, too, when the man grabbed Brienne's arm and positioned the muzzle of his gun at her head.

"Jaime Lannithter," said the leader. "Wathn't exthpecting you, but I can't thay it's not a pleathure. We got a thcore to thettle, you and I." He glared with malevolence at the newcomer. "Put your gunths on the floor."

"Vargo Hoat," replied Lannister as he bent and placed his pistols on the dusty wood, hands up to either side of his head as he rose again. "Should have killed you when I had the chance."

The leader一 Vargo Hoat, apparently一 barked an unpleasant laugh. "That'th why they thay you have a thoft heart, Lannithter. You alwayth try to turn your bountieth in alive when you don't have to." He cocked his gun, the click vibrating through Brienne's jaw where it rested. "Bet you won't make that mithtake again."

"Sure won't," Lannister agreed easily. His eyes met Brienne's. "Won't make a lot of mistakes again."

A frisson of _something_ slithered down her spine. It seemed like he was saying something directly to her, not this Hoat criminal, something with... meaning. She almost laughed at her fanciful thought. He was probably only trying to tell her to stay quiet. She could do that; she was a fighter, but she wasn't stupid, and an unarmed woman against a man with a gun poised at her face was not a battle she could win.

"Thure won't," Hoat mocked, then shocked Brienne by redirecting his gun from her to Lannister. "Never got to thank you for taking me in, latht time. Let me expreth my gratitude."

Brienne's breath rattled in her chest as her lungs seized in dread; Lannister's green eyes widened at the realization that Hoat was going to shoot him in cold blood, and for a moment there was alarm on his face, but then a disturbing sort of... acceptance.

_No_. Mr. Lannister might have some sort of bizarre death wish, but she wasn't going to let him fulfill it, not while she was there to do something about it. Hoat's finger tensed on the trigger, and she knew her time was nigh: she threw her elbow back into his belly with as much force as she was capable of一 and she was capable of a _lot_ of force一 and smiled grimly when she felt something give way within him.

But at the same time, the gun went off, and Jaime shouted, and Hoat fell, clutching at Brienne, and she fell, too, and then the sheriff was there, with all the saloon patrons, drunk and ready for a good fight.

But there was no good fight to be had; Jaime had killed everyone but Hoat, who lay crumpled on the floor and wheezing around the rib she was hopeful had punctured his lung. With visible expressions of disappointment, everyone but the sheriff put away their guns and ambled back to the saloon, grumbling.

"What the hell happened here?" demanded the sheriff. He was a wiry fellow with hard, squinty eyes. "Who're these cunts?"

The women present all gasped at his crudeness, but Brienne had eyes only for Jaime, who staggered on his feet with his hand curled close to his chest. Red blossomed across his vest and down his sleeve.

_His gun hand_, she thought with alarm. _Without his gun hand, he's– _

He began to sink, slowly, face frozen in a rictus of disbelief and pain, and Brienne's feet propelled her across the room to him without conscious instruction.

"Mr. Lannister!" she gasped as she reached for him, lowering him to the floor.

"My– my name's Jaime," he rasped, and then his eyes rolled up into his head as he went limp in her arms, unconscious.

.

* * *

.

Jaime was in the sheriff's office, watching as Bronn wrote out a telegram to the court in Sunspear about his bounty being turned in, when he saw the large form of Miss Duncan crossing the street to the bank. He thought again of how close he'd come to kissing her and squinted against the glare of the late afternoon sun to watch her disappear inside the building.

"That's one big woman," Bronn commented. "I bet her legs一"

"Shut your mouth," Jaime said absently, still staring at the door after it closed behind her. "She's not one of those saloon girls you like so well."

"You like them, too," Bronn shot back with a smirk. "Or will that be someone else roaring like a lion with Ros in about fifteen minutes?"

Jaime said nothing. It occurred to him that Bronn would be an excellent candidate for Miss Duncan's ill-fated quest; he wasn't a bounty hunter, but he was a sheriff in a grubby town in the wild desert of Dorne; gods knew the fools living safely in the towns and villages of the more civilized parts of Westeros ate that sort of romantic notion up with a spoon. It might not be as impressive as Jaime's occupation, but it came a close second.

And Bronn was passably handsome, though of course he paled in comparison to Jaime's own golden appeal. Plus, he lacked the scruples about marriage that Jaime clung to, the lone remnant of an ideal he could salvage from the smoking ruins of his family's influence. No, Bronn would have accepted before he even heard the entirety of the mad plan from Miss Duncan.

He wasn't a _bad_ sort, per se, but he would definitely be one of the ones who'd stay married to her in order to ensure a lifetime of cushy living. He'd even be kind to her as she wanted, as long as she let him spend time with some accommodating ladies in a seedier part of town. Jaime pictured him at Miss Duncan's side, perhaps looking down at an infant held in her arms, and his fist clenched around the promissory note Bronn had just finishing laying on his palm.

"Did she say something to you?" asked Bronn, staring down at the paper crumpled in Jaime's hand. "You look like you hate her."

_No,_ _and that's the problem._ Be a lot easier if he did, to just let her waltz out of town to the surefire doom of some godsforsaken reprobate who'd rob her blind. _Fine time to make an appearance_, he griped at his conscience while he stuffed the paper into his vest pocket.

And humming insistently in the background of his mind was a wordless thread of antagonism, born of alarm. He didn't like anything that stirred up emotions long thought dead or made him think of, _long _for, things best left in the past.

"Got any more bounties?" he asked. He could leave that very night, get away from Hellholt and Miss Duncan, be gone when she left to present herself to someone who might very well be the death of her. It was none of his business, anyway, and一

The unmistakable sound of a gunshot pierced the peaceful evening, cutting through the dry, hot air. Bronn bolted to the door, whipping it open and stepping outside to peer for its source with keen eyes.

Jaime followed, every sense alert and quivering as he pulled on the leather strings securing his pistols in their holsters. If they were needed, he didn't want to have to wait the second it would take to untie them.

One of the dirt farmers from further north up the Brimstone lurched from the bank, gut-shot and clutching his belly, to tumble down the boardwalk steps to the dusty street.

_She's in there,_ Jaime thought, and that was the last clear thing he recalled; after that, his body started moving on its own, the way it always did when he was in danger, his senses so well-honed after years of keeping himself alive that he hardly needed to tell them what to do.

He was across the street in the space of one second, and inside the bank in the space of another. _She_ was standing with one of the robbers, a ragged sack outstretched between them; clearly, he was in the process of robbing her, and getting nowhere for his troubles, if her stubborn expression and his frustrated one was any indication.

Time slowed, stretching like molasses, giving Jaime more than he needed to pump a bullet into five of the men, and nearly enough to put a sixth between the last one's eyes. The robber's reflexes weren't bad, though, and he snatched at Miss Duncan in desperation, his gun pressing to her jaw.

It was Vargo Hoat, Jaime realized with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Stupid lisping bastard would hold a grudge for taking him in a few months back. Jaime hadn't heard of his escaping from whatever pit they'd tossed him in, or he'd have been more careful. He wouldn't put it past Hoat to shoot Miss Duncan just to spite him, to make him know her death was because of him.

_Maybe I can rush him,_ Jaime thought, _dive at his legs, kick the gun from his hand… _

"Won't make a lot of mistakes again," he told Hoat, but it was to Miss Duncan he looked and spoke, hoping she'd hear his message in the words. Their eyes locked. Hers were calm, not at all alarmed as one might expect in such a situation, and he took heart at her composure. She held herself tensely, though, as if bracing to attack, and that worried him. If she'd just stand still, maybe drop to the floor when she had a chance, odds were good she'd survive this.

_Don't,_ he thought to her. _Don't do anything stupid. _Maybe Hoat would just take his ill-gotten loot and leave. Jaime doubted it, though; Hoat had to know that Jaime would be after him within minutes. But Hoat was not stupid along with being vengeful and cruel. He swung his arm to point his pistol at Jaime in the blink of an eye, and Jaime saw his death framed by the gun's muzzle. No, Jaime wasn't leaving the bank in one piece. This was the end, then. He'd always wondered when it would come.

Well, at least it might buy Miss Duncan her safety.

That was when time decided to speed up again, everything happening too quickly for him to understand; there was the crack of Hoat's gun firing, and Hoat's pained grunt, and a hot rush of agony blazed through Jaime's hand.

He made the mistake of looking down at it. It seemed not much more than blood and a pulpy mass of torn and exposed muscle. Jaime was not one much given to attacks of the vapors, but the mess his hand had been turned into had his knees softening.

_Up, up, _he thought frantically, _gotta stay up, a sitting duck is a dead duck__一_

But instead of the jarring landing he expected, strong arms一 gentle arms一 came around him and kept him from adding a concussion to his list of injuries.

"Mr. Lannister!" said Miss Duncan, her magnificent eyes wide and horrified as she stared down at him.

_I'm in her lap,_ he thought, and it made him stupidly happy. In that moment, in that much pain, he ignored the angry hateful voice telling him he disliked her and admitted to himself that he wanted none of that 'Mr. Lannister' business between them.

"My– my name's Jaime," he told her.

And then he fainted.


	4. Chapter 4

Around Brienne, the bank was bustling: patrons rummaging the robbers' sacks for what had been stolen from them, the tellers receiving the taken money and putting it safely away, and the manager directing it all with an air of someone who'd had to do it many times before.

"Get the maester," said the sheriff to no one in particular as he handcuffed the injured robber— Hoat, Mr. Lannister had called him— and ignored how the man whimpered in pain as he was hoisted to his feet. A wiry fellow with bulgy eyes ran off on that task. "And we need a way to carry him out of here."

An old door was produced, and Mr. Lannister's limp form deposited upon it. Two sturdy fellows, the least drunk of the lot, were pressed into shifting him onto it from Brienne's lap, and off they began to cart him.

"Where will they take him?" she asked the sheriff, studying his reaction. He looked worried as his keen blue eyes watched Mr. Lannister's halting progress down the street.

"Boarding house, I expect," he replied, then squinted at her. "Who're you, anyway? He wouldn't have bothered if you hadn't been in here."

_What was that supposed to mean? _she wondered. How ridiculous. There was no way Mr. Lannister would have risked himself because of her.

"Brienne Duncan," she said haltingly, puzzled, and waited for his introduction, but when none came, she prodded, "And you, ser?"

He barked a laugh. "Bronn, ma'am."

She waited again, this time for his other name, but when none was forthcoming, she sighed. "Is Bronn your first or last name?"

"It's my only name. Though I guess I could use it as a first, and Sand as a last."

_Ah. _Brienne was not unaware of the existence of illegitimate persons, but she'd never met someone with only a single name before.

He seemed to take her silence, as she pondered the issue, as judgment, and sneered. "I know you're thinking, what's a bastard cunt like me doing as a lawman, but—"

"I thought nothing of the sort," Brienne interrupted, offended. "I was thinking I hadn't met someone with only a single name before."

"And next, you'd be thinking that—"

"And _next_, I'd be thinking about Mr. Lannister's injury and the treatment he'll receive." She narrowed her gaze at him, fully aware it made her seem even more formidable than her height and build did, and indeed he fell silent, scrutinizing her.

But she had other fish to fry, just that moment. "I don't like the idea of him in that boarding house," she murmured, more to herself than to him. "It's not clean, there. He'll get an infection."

Sheriff Bronn gave a snort. "Where else'll he go, the hotel? Jaime Fookin' Lannister won't thank you for spending his money on it, I tell you that."

She shot him an unfriendly glance. "Then I'll pay for it myself," she informed him, and stalked off after the door-bearing men.

"Bring him to the hotel," she said crisply, waiting until they complied before striding to the hotel herself.

"I need a large room, your cleanest," she informed the clerk.

He looked confused. "Is there something wrong with the room you already have, ma'am? I'll send a maid right up—"

"No, in addition to my own room," Brienne clarified. "For someone else."

Behind her, a clatter and muffled curse told her that the men were carrying Mr. Lannister into the dingy little lobby, such as it was. Truth be told, the hotel wasn't that much better than the boarding house, but failing an alternative…

She turned back to find the clerk gaping at the picture presented to him, and Brienne knew it was surprising— a bleeding man on a door borne by two obviously intoxicated saloon patrons swaying on their feet— but there was no time to indulge his amazement. She rapped her knuckles on the wooden counter of the reception desk.

"Now, if you please," she said, and he gave a little jump.

"Yes, ma'am!"

As soon as she had key in hand, she instructed the nervous little clerk to send the maester to the room immediately upon arrival, and led the way up the stairs. The room was, indeed, large and clean, though its open windows were permitting the ever-present dust from the street to waft in, and Brienne hastened to close them.

After Mr. Lannister had been transferred from the door to the bed, she thanked them each with a dragon in a handshake and sent them on their way. Alone with him, she armed herself with a stack of washcloths and towels and dragged a straight-backed chair to the bedside.

Sitting down, she carefully took Mr. Lannister's forearm to lift his hand from where, even unconscious, he cradled it close. It was still bleeding, though only sluggishly by that point, so she folded two washcloths into fat pads and pressed one to each side of the neat round hole piercing the angle between thumb and forefinger.

That done, she permitted herself a moment to study him, the fine planes of his face, how his golden hair fell away from his face to course over the white pillow below his head, the way his boots dirtied the bedspread—

_That won__'t do, _she thought, and set about removing them. His socks had holes in them, she noted, and stripped those off as well, leaving his big feet poking up into the air. Then she decided perhaps he'd do better without his jacket, and scuttled back to her own room for her sewing scissors, returning to cut the garment off. It was blood-stained and worn, anyway, so its demise was no great loss, to her way of thinking. His vest fit closely, emphasizing the trim span of his waist and how it narrowed from his big shoulders, and Brienne swallowed hard against the surge of some peculiar tightness in her belly at the sight of it.

Then she set to cutting off his shirt's sleeve at the shoulder, so the maester did not have to bother with the bloodied fabric in his way when he tended the wound. Doing so bared a well-sculpted arm, all muscles and sinews undulating along its length, dusted with sun-bleached hair that made her fingertips tingle when she dared to coast them over his skin.

Brienne snatched her hand back; what was she doing? The man lay there in a faint, wounded and bloody, after saving her and the rest of the bank patrons, and she was putting her hands on him in a very inappropriate way. Feeling deeply ashamed of herself, and drained by the events of the last half-hour, she slumped back in the chair as all her energy abruptly left her. She'd thought herself dead for sure, and then Mr. Lannister dead for sure, and now they were both alive but he was wounded, and if the sheriff were to be trusted, it was because of her, though she had no idea _why_.

And she still had to make the last train back to Sunspear, or should she not? Should she stay here, with Mr. Lannister, to ensure he received the treatment he needed? His hand was his living, his means of support, and without it, she did not like to think of what might happen to him.

But she was nothing to him. _Less_ than nothing; their conversation had lasted no more than ten minutes and was the entirety of their acquaintance. Mr. Lannister didn't seem to like her much, if the hardness of his eyes and sharpness of his smile were any indication. It would be peculiar if she did stay, she decided, and resolved to be on that last train if at all possible. Better to take herself out of his life, since being in it had not appeared to improve it much.

A brisk rap at the door announced the maester at last, a reedy little man with a very businesslike manner. In short order, he had washed his hands in a weak solution of caustic soda and deposed Brienne from her vigil, seating himself and removing the washcloths from around Mr. Lannister's hand to peer down with keen brown eyes.

"Well," he said at last, sitting back and looking up at where Brienne hovered nearby, "at least I won't have to pick fabric shreds from it."

And then, ignoring her presence entirely, he set about putting Mr. Lannister's hand back together. She twitched every time she heard the tiny clink of a shard of bone falling into the small metal dish at the maester's elbow, and shuddered every time he made another stitch of boiled silk thread to hold the muscles, and then skin, together.

At one point, unable to keep watching, Brienne turned away and poured water into the basin, trying without much success to wash his blood from her hands. She scrubbed and scrubbed, then tried to blot her skirt clean— thank goodness it was black; her white shirt and blue jacket were hopeless— but red persisted in the lines of her palms and under her nails.

"I have some arrangements to make," she murmured to the maester, who just nodded and flapped a bloody hand at her in dismissal.

Brienne hastened to her own room and made short work of stripping off her jacket and shirt, donning fresh in a trice, then washing her face and tidying her hair from the limp, fallen knot it had become with all the excitement of the afternoon. Presentable once more, she set about her errands and returned to Mr. Lannister's room.

The maester had finished, by then, and his patient rested quietly, his hand swathed in an inch-thick layer of bandages.

"It won't be what it was," announced the maester, Yandel as he introduced himself. "But if he lets it mend properly, and exercises it once it's healed so there's no atrophy or stiffening, I estimate he'll recoup most of his strength and agility with it."

Brienne was stricken by twin pangs of guilt and regret, and felt even more sure she was doing the right thing.

"I see," she replied after a moment. Then she handed Maester Yandel an envelope. "For your trouble. And…" She handed him another, that one with Mr. Lannister's name written across it. "If you could see he gets this, I would be grateful."

Yandel peered closely at her, then glanced at the small bundle held in the crook of her arm. "And that?"

She felt herself blushing. "It's, um, socks. For him. Because his were in poor shape." Awkwardly, she held the package out to the maester. She permitted herself one last gaze at Mr. Lannister, at the peaceful rise and fall of his broad chest and the way his golden lashes lay in crescents on his tanned cheeks. "Tell him…"

Yandel raised his eyebrows, waiting.

"Tell him… tell him goodbye."

.

* * *

.

In his dream, the conversation Jaime had with Miss Duncan went very differently. In his dream, he had broached the few inches separating them and kissed that tart mouth of hers, had been dizzyingly close to those damned beautiful eyes of hers before closing his own, giving himself up to the feel and taste of her.

In his dream she tasted tart, too, and her lips were just as soft as her heart, and her hands were gentle on him as they stripped off his clothing and touched him with something that seemed close to love.

Ros was always so rough in her passion for him, and while he'd always been proud that the town's most sought-after whore would have him for free, because she wanted him and not his dragons, the fact was that Ros had no idea how to make love. All she knew was fucking, fast and hard and, yes, satisfying… mostly.

But even if she wasn't charging him, she was still keeping to a schedule, and he never had the time he wanted to touch and explore and enjoy. She damn near booted him out of bed, then out the door, when the hour was up. Drowsy and sated, he'd have to clamber back into his clothes and stumble back to the boarding house alone instead of just roll over and gather her against him and fall asleep.

That quick, impersonal hour might be enough for some men— probably was enough for most men— but Jaime had known love, once, had enjoyed it long enough to leave the memory of it lingering behind his heart, unwelcome but unable to be excised. The difference between lovemaking and fucking was… significant.

He thought he'd killed that longing, after over a decade away from the poisonous nature of the Lannisters, but it was clear he'd only buried it for a while. Something about the biggest, ugliest woman in Westeros had dug it back up, had sparked it to life. He suspected it was how, in a way, she reminded him of his brother. Tyrion, too, was hideous, but under it lay the real 'handsomest man in Westeros'. Likewise, he suspected that under Miss Duncan's lackluster exterior was a beauty to rival even Cersei.

He banished thoughts of his sister, trying to focus on kissing Miss Duncan, but there was an insistent pang in his gun hand, a twinge that started small and grew until it was one giant red throbbing ache. With a jolt, he wakened, sitting upright so quickly his head swam.

"My hand," he said, and then, "Miss Duncan."

He looked down and found his hand wrapped in an entire textile factory's worth of bandages. His mind jolted with alarm: what had happened to him? Without his hand, he couldn't bring in more bounties, couldn't earn a living. And, worse, without his gun hand he wouldn't be able to defend himself against former bounties or surviving families harboring a grudge.

He gasped as he tried to cradle his hand against his chest and another wave of pain crashed over him. Sweat dotted his forehead and sickness roiled in his stomach. He clenched his teeth, unwilling to humiliate himself by puking all over. Once the nausea passed, he was able to unclamp his jaw, and let loose a tirade that near turned the air blue.

"Now, Mr. Lannister, there's no need for that sort of language," admonished a man to one side, and Jaime opened his eyes to find finicky little Maester Yandel hovering nearby, quivering in indignation. Yandel held out a glass of water cloudy with analgesic powder, and Jaime grabbed it with his awkward left hand, gulping as he realized how thirsty he was as well as desperate for something to relieve the pain.

He lay there in silence until the powder worked its magic and the red haze of agony eased enough for his usual quick tongue to reassert itself.

"Like you've never heard a man cuss before," Jaime grumbled as he slumped back against the pillows. There was a veritable mountain of them behind him, which struck him as odd since the boarding house only ever provided two, and those as flat as Miss Duncan's chest. He averted his gaze from the maester's prissily-contorted face to their surroundings.

Instead of whitewashed board walls, there was painted plaster and wainscoting and wallpaper. The floor revealed around the edges of the plush rug gleamed, and the furniture一 fancy pieces such as what he'd grown up with back at Casterly Rock, not the plain and serviceable things most folks had in Ghost Hill, almost blinded him with how brightly polished it had been. _This isn't the boarding house._

"Is this一 am I in the hotel?" he demanded. In his confusion, he'd managed to forget the throbbing pain of his hand and tried to hoist himself into a sitting position. The lance of anguish that shot up his arm had him cursing vividly once more.

Yandel tutted at him like a scandalized old granny and helped Jaime up, tucking yet another fat pillow behind his back. "Yes," he said peevishly. "And before you ask how and why, I have something for you to read."

He thrust a sealed envelope at Jaime, then turned to where a pile of bandages lay beside a basin of pink water on a nearby table.

"I'll be back soon. Please do not get out of the bed."

"Doubt I could even if I wanted to," Jaime muttered, then called out after the maester's retreating back, "How'm I supposed to open the damned envelope?" but the man just shut the door behind him with a _snick_. Jaime was forced to have at it with his teeth and the hand not wrapped an inch thick in linen. When he finally declared victory, it was to find a tidily-written missive addressed to him.

_Dear Mr. Lannister,_

_I am aware of the necessity to use your hand for your livelihood. Maester Yandel tells me you must remain bandaged and refrain from straining your arm while you heal, and that it will take at least a month, and possibly two or more. Since you were wounded in the course of attempting the rescue of the bank's patrons, including myself, I have taken the liberty of installing you in the hotel, and ensured the maester would provide you with all the attention you might need, for the next week._

Jaime scowled at the compliment she was paying herself at his expense, flattering herself that he'd done it for her. And what did she mean by paying for his hotel stay and the maester? What was she trying to communicate with the gesture?

_Please accept a modest amount to support you as you convalesce, as well as my apologies for your injury. If I had not taken it upon myself to attack that man, he would not have shot you in the hand. I have left the sum at the bank under your name; you have simply to present yourself there, and they will give it to you._

_Sincerely,_

_Brienne Duncan_

_Stupid wench, _he thought, slumping back against all the pillows. She thought she was to blame? _Flattering herself again. _She might be entirely too full of herself, but credit where it was due: she was as brave as she was hideous. She'd saved him. If she hadn't attacked Hoat, he'd have shot Jaime in the head instead of the hand.

The maester bustled back into the room holding a tray of food with some ominous-looking medicine bottles arrayed around the steaming plate of what looked like pork chops, mashed potatoes, peas, and a huge slab of pie. Jaime's stomach growled at the sight. As the tray was settled over his lap, he spotted a folded sheet of paper that seemed to be smeared with… blood?

"What's this?" he asked, grasping one corner between left thumb and forefinger and trying, without much success, to shake it open.

"One of the maids found it in a jacket left behind by Miss Duncan. She thinks Miss Duncan intended to just discard the jacket and forgot that was in it." Yandel nodded at the paper. "Your name is on it, so she thought you'd want to have it."

Confused, Jaime managed to unfold the paper and stared down at Miss Duncan's now-familiar handwriting to find a neat list of names, his own first and foremost of them, with a line penciled through it.

_Jaime Lannister_

_Oberyn Martell_

_The Mountain_

_Ramsey Snow_


	5. Chapter 5

Jaime gaped down in horror for a full ten seconds, disbelieving his own eyes. He and the other three were bounty hunters, but that was the only thing they all had in common. The average Westerosi knew them from the articles and two-stag novels only as gunmen hauling outlaws in for justice but those who knew better, like Jaime, had an inside line on the truth behind the romance of their stories.

Oberyn Martell was famed Westeros-wide as a dark, romantic lover, but Jaime knew about his unrestrained libido and shocking number of bastards. He wasn't known for cruelty, though, so while he might well leave Miss Duncan deflowered and pregnant, he probably wouldn't physically harm her.

The others, though… The Mountain was viewed as something super-human, and perhaps he was; Jaime had grown up with the man unfortunately, and his sheer size was alarming enough, but coupled with a complete bankruptcy of morality made him a real-life monster.

And Ramsay Snow, though touted by the two-stag novels as a "regular guy makes good" hero for enjoying some amount of success despite his smaller stature and illegitimate birth, was just as depraved as The Mountain, in his own way. Jaime's own kill number was too high to be counted, by this point in his life, and still the things Jaime heard they did to their bounties made _him_ feel a bit sick.

And she was going to present herself to them, offer them a huge amount of money, hand herself and her home up on a silver damned platter. Oberyn would just seduce her, but The Mountain and Snow would destroy her, body and soul.

An upswell of some unpleasant feeling rose to his throat, forming a lump and tugging at something he could have sworn was a conscience, if he still had one after all these years. _No_, he thought, _no no no no nonono_. _She couldn__'t— this was— they would— __no__._

Before he entirely knew what he was doing, Jaime shoved the tray down the bed to his feet— his _bare_ feet, where the hell had his socks gone?— and swung his legs around to the floor.

Yandel bolted to Jaime's side, trying without success to shove the larger man back into the bed, muttering imprecations all the while.

"No, ser, Mr. Lannister," he said firmly. "You can't leave this bed for at least another day. I've gone to quite a lot of trouble saving your hand for you."

"And I do appreciate your efforts," Jaime said smoothly, trying not to grin at the diminutive maester's foiled attempts. It was like a chipmunk trying to manhandle an ox. But his head was swimming just the slightest bit— must have lost a good amount of blood— so he pretended Yandel was holding him back while he waited for the world to stop spinning. "But I need to get to Sunspear as soon as possible."

Yandel tsked. "On what, wings?" he snipped. "The last train left hours ago. The next one isn't until tomorrow morning. If you try to ride, you won't get there for three days. If you take a coach, it'll be four." He gave another ineffectual shove at Jaime's chest to make him lay down.

Jaime squinted down at Yandel, his mind going a mile a minute. "I'll get back into bed and be a model patient," he said, "_if_ you do a few things for me."

The maester squinted back, wary. He was no fool; there was no telling what Jaime might ask of him. "I'm listening," he replied at last.

"Go to the hotel desk and tell them to fork back the money for the rest of the week's stay, since I'm leaving in the morning," Jaime told him. "Then go to my room at the boarding house and collect all my things. If they don't fit in the carpet bag under the bed, buy another. Pack it all up and bring it back here."

"It's after ten at night!" protested Yandel.

"So wake Miz Uller," Jaime said, inexorable, brooking no argument, and added, "and I, in turn, will not require back the rest of the week's pay Miss Duncan has given you for my care."

Yandel took his time pondering the matter, but finally realized he could either go along or be swept away by the tidal force that was Jaime Lannister when he'd made up his mind. He snatched up the tray and waited only until Jaime had ensconced himself once more in the bed, then plunked it back onto his lap before marching off on the tasks he'd been given to do.

And Jaime tucked into his pork chops with relish. With only the one hand, he couldn't cut them, so just stabbed each one with the fork, raising it to his mouth and gnawing off a bite. It was barbaric, the way the juice ran down his chin, but there was something oddly satisfying about it.

Thought she could assume everything had happened because of _her_? And then just leave him there, set up in a cushy hotel room with a fat wad of cash, like a… a bought man, did she? And take off on a mad quest with a guaranteed grisly ending? Fool woman needed a few home truths told to her, and he was just the man to do it.

.

* * *

.

When Brienne arrived in Sunspear for the second time, it was after midnight and she was dragging her feet with exhaustion as she left the train. Fortunately, a hack lurked nearby, hopeful of a fare, and she quickly climbed in, directing the driver to the Grand Allyrion Hotel, where she'd stayed upon her arrival from Tarth only two days earlier.

It seemed far longer since she'd left her home. She realized that Sansa was due in Tarth in just under a week and felt herself blanch in horror. Could she really only have mere days to come up with some solution to her quandary? Or, this time next week, would she find herself the reluctant bride of whichever poor sap her friend had dazzled into wedding her?

She thought back, not for the first time, of Mr. Lannister's entreaty that she reconsider. What other options did she have, besides pretending to already be married and thus unavailable to any Sansa-influenced swain who might present himself? She'd pondered, and discarded, any number of other possibilities.

Feign amnesia? Sansa would never believe it; she was fanciful, not stupid, and with Brienne's luck, even if Sansa _did_ believe she had lost her memory, she'd insist on remaining on Tarth until every scrap of Brienne's mind had returned to her. Same with any other injury- or illness-related excuse; Sansa would simply stay and nurse her back to health, regardless of how long it took, and then when Brienne was hale and whole once more… the wedding.

She'd even considered simply not being there when Sansa arrived, of instructing the servants to provide Sansa and Sandor and their retinue every comfort but being very far away herself, in an undisclosed location, until her guests had departed and Tarth was safe for her once more. It was unforgivably rude, and would worry Sansa terribly, and there was still the risk that she'd just stay at Evenfall Hall while waiting for word from the dozen investigators and detectives she'd hire to locate her wayward friend.

No, the only solution was to appear before Sansa with her own husband in tow, giving every evidence of being part of a happy and fulfilling union. The saloon girls at The Silver Slipper, whom Brienne had consulted at length, had declared Mr. Martell quite the suave and attractive fellow, dark and slim, with a delightful accent.

_He kisses a lady__'s hand!_ they'd exclaimed, giggling, and Brienne had understood that he employed old-fashioned, courtly, romantic habits that were sure to charm the boots off of Sansa.

_But Mr. Lannister kissed my hand, too,_ her traitorous brain reminded her, and damned if she couldn't still feel the soft brush of his lips over her skin, just a fleeting streak of heat, there and gone again.

_Best not to think about that anymore,_ she scolded herself. _It__'s not going to happen again, because I'm never going to see him again, and good riddance. _Horrible rude man. Though she'd been rude, too, she made herself admit…

_Onward_.

At the Grand Allyrion, she distractedly scrawled her name in the register book and trudged after the bellhop to her room, grateful beyond words when she could fall into the big soft bed after a hurried washing-up. She would go meet Mr. Martell as she had planned, and if he refused her as well, she would move on to the next fellow on her list, and if he were unwilling, perhaps the fourth would accept.

That left her with a few days before Sansa's arrival, to travel back to Tarth and perpetuate the elaborate fiction of her recent marriage to the sort of intense, dangerous warrior guaranteed to make her friend swoon. Then, once Sansa was gone, Brienne's 'husband' would depart as well, five thousand dragons richer, leaving her with a future free of well-intentioned meddlings.

It was all very neatly decided, a tidy plan, but instead of making Brienne feel more settled, she fell asleep to troubled thoughts and persistent memories of mocking green eyes and a sharp, infuriating smirk.

Despite her late bedtime, Brienne woke early the next morning. She sent her calling card and a note requesting a few moments of his time to Oberyn Martell, then took her time with her toilette, enjoying a leisurely bath in cool water and brushing her hair a hundred strokes, until she managed to impart some luster to it.

She took her time with breakfast, as well, taking it on the veranda outside her room, reading _The Sunspear Times_ from from front to back and returning some correspondence to Margaery Tyrell and Catelyn Stark. They were under the impression she was enjoying a brief holiday, and it made her feel slightly less guilty for her deception, if she behaved as if she were on holiday instead of rummaging through Westeros for a man she could pay to marry her.

Mr. Martell's response in the affirmative arrived with her last cup of coffee and as she passed through the lobby on her way out, she glanced into the tall, gilt-framed pier glass and smoothed a flyaway strand of hair back into her chignon.

Brienne had dressed in a proper skirt for her meeting with Mr. Martell, with a high waist that, combined with a ruthless corset, offered a pretense of a womanly shape. With it, she wore a pristine white batiste blouse so filmy it hinted at the pink of her skin beneath, and a bolero jacket atop it all. The skirt and jacket were navy serge sewn with jet beads in a scrolling pattern, and the pin at her throat was a cameo of her mother's profile commissioned by her father as a wedding gift.

In its entirety, it was the finest ensemble she'd brought with her, and she felt if not pretty, at least neat and appropriate and inoffensive, not asking anyone to endure her fashion caprices by presenting herself in men's clothing. Perhaps that had been part of the reason Mr. Lannister had rejected her, the day before…

_Little point in wondering about it now,_ she told herself sternly, and pinned the limp blonde locks into a fancier-than-usual upsweep. _He said no. Rudely, too. _

She placed her hat just-so on her head and speared it through with a sturdy hat pin, easily accessible. Never let it be said that she walked into uncertainty unarmed.

After navigating through a near-impenetrable knot of traffic, the hack deposited Brienne at the bottom of a long flight of fanned-out marble steps, only crumbling the slightest bit. At the top of the steps squatted the most peculiar structure she'd ever seen, for it was as if a huge medieval ship had sprung from the sea and beached itself, then been turned by the gods from wood to sparkling sand-colored granite. It had been added to along the centuries with tall towers capped by onion-shaped domes, gilded and bright. Tiles the color of the sea and sun were inset everywhere, and when Brienne mounted the last stair, she saw that the expanse before her was an intricate mosaic depicting various scenes of Dorne's glorious past.

Despite the seeming opulence, however, it was clear that the Martells' heyday had come and gone, with everything in poor repair and in need of a good scrubbing, to Brienne's critical eye. Not a servant was to be seen, no matter how she craned her neck, so she was left to her own devices in picking her way across the sun-splashed courtyard and down first one vine-shaded loggia, then another.

At last, she heard voices, and hastened toward them, discreetly swiping the cuff of her sleeve over her dampening forehead. Though Tarth was not that far north of Dorne, the climate was milder; it did not bear such a relentless brunt of sun, and she was neither accustomed to the heat nor dressed for it. As she rounded a corner and spied a small group of people— one man and several woman, it appeared— she was immediately consumed with envy for their lightweight silk garments.

As she came closer, however, her envy melted into shock, because their clothing was not merely light but transparent, and very daring in cut, as well, with chests exposed in a deep V to the waist and the shape of arms and legs visible through the diaphanous greens and violets and golds and pinks the women wore. Not one of them had a hat on, letting the sun broil down on their glossy dark heads and caramel-toned skin, and Brienne's usual sense of being an outsider because of her looks trebled in an instant.

She came to a stop, stricken, and then turned on her heel to leave. This had been a mistake. She fit in with these people even more badly than she did everywhere else; they were compact and dusky and graceful, lively and easy in manner, and there she was, tall and broad and pale, stolid and awkward.

"But you must be Miss Duncan!" cried a male voice behind her. "Where are you going? We have been on tenterhooks ever since I received your note earlier. Please, join us."

"Mr. Martell?" she ventured, reluctantly turning to face him, and was rewarded with a gleaming smile.

"The same!" he replied, reaching for her hand. Like Mr. Lannister, he brushed his lips across her fingers, giving her a chance to take in the crop of black curls on his head. His eyes, when he lifted them once more, were so dark she could not distinguish the iris from the pupil. He was very handsome, just as she'd been told, with a strong, hawkish nose and sensual lips that smiled easily. His tawny skin was flawless, and set off beautifully by a neat moustache.

He wore dark brown trousers with a shirt of burnt orange under a jacket of golden yellow, embroidered all over in little suns. It should have looked utterly ridiculous, and on anyone else it would have, but on Mr. Martell it seemed far more suitable than something more staid would have. He moved with a pantherish grace, and Brienne could easily see why he was counted the second-best gunslinger in Westeros; Mr. Lannister might have unerring aim and strength on his side, but Mr. Martell was the more agile and speedy of the two, she would judge.

But there was something to his manner that did not put her at ease, despite how friendly he was as he drew her hand through the crook of his elbow and led her to the others, then introducing her around. Not only his grace was catlike, but also the predatory way he gazed at her, as if he were imagining her without her clothing and planning how to divest her of it in short order. It sent a flush of horror through her, and she felt her face heat in agitation.

"You look quite pink, Miss Duncan," said the eldest of the women, a sloe-eyed beauty with a dulcet voice. She urged Brienne toward a chaise. "Please sit. Obara, some tea."

Brienne let the woman— Ellaria, she thought had been said— persuade her onto the chaise, and accepted the tea, drinking blindly then starting in surprise, for it was cold, in a cylindrical metal cup, and tasted of honey and mint. "This… this is wonderful," she said, surprise evident in her voice.

Laughter pealed around her.

"How sad for you Westerosi," drawled Mr. Martell, "that you are only given your usual fare when you come to Dorne, instead of trying our native dishes."

"I wish we could!" said Brienne, feeling much refreshed as she sipped and sipped, draining her cup. It was instantly refilled, and she drank that, too. "But aren't you Westerosi, too?"

They all exchanged an amused glance. "Only under duress," said Ellaria. "But please, we are all dying of curiosity. Oberyn doesn't know of a Duncan family in Dorne, so you must be from away, and what can a respectable woman like yourself from elsewhere want with him?"

There was something in the way she said 'respectable' that made Brienne think that respectability was humorous to her, somehow.

"I— that is, if—" she stammered, feeling flustered to be watched by so many strange eyes, and drank deeply from her metal cup once more. "If I could speak with Mr. Martell alone, I would— I would appreciate it greatly."

For the space of a heartbeat, nothing happened, and then Ellaria smiled. "Of course," she said. Her glance at Mr. Martell was knowing in a way achieved only after long, intimate years.

He rose in a single lithe movement. "Come with me," he said, and stepped forward, his hands strong and sure on Brienne's as he gently drew her to her feet. "I think you will be more comfortable in the parlor."

Indeed she was; it was cool and dark inside, with more silks draped over the window to mute the brilliance of the sunlight but permit passage of air. There was the scent of incense, and looking around, Brienne spotted a small brazier in one corner with a slender curl of fragrant smoke rising from it.

She sank onto a low, armless chaise. Mr. Martell sat opposite on another and merely waited, his eyes as bright and inquisitive as a sparrow's.

"Better?" he asked, and she nodded. "Then let's begin."


	6. Chapter 6

"You're fookin' crazy," Bronn informed him as he counted out dragons into Jaime's waiting palm. "Why are you even out of bed today? The woman left enough money for you to live like a king for two months."

"That's exactly why," Jaime forced through gritted teeth. He'd taken a dose of the horrible-tasting analgesis powder dissolved in water but his hand was still throbbing with pain, though he'd die before admitting it to anyone. "Thinks she's the reason I got shot, thinks she can get me shot and just pay me off—"

"Did she get you shot or not? Make up your fookin' mind." Bronn shoved the last bill at him and circled his desk to sit down and hoist his dusty boots onto its surface, heedless of the papers strewn with careless abandon over its surface. "Because I was there when you ran after her into the bank, don't forget."

"I didn't—"

"And if you'd just killed Hoat when you brought him in a few months ago, like any smart cunt would have done, you'd not have him bearing you a grudge worth shooting you for," Bronn continued, merciless in his honesty.

"I captured him while he was taking a shit," Jaime grumbled. "How'm I supposed to kill a man in the middle of taking a shit?"

"Better that than leaving him alive to shoot your fookin' hand off."

"And _anyway_," Jaime continued, determinedly ignoring the issue of Hoat and his own folly in leaving the man alive, "what was I supposed to do, just sit back and put my feet up—" he flicked a dismissive finger against the toe of Bronn's boot— "while she was in there, getting robbed and gods-know-what else?"

Bronn's pale eyes were unimpressed with Jaime's logic. "I've seen you fall asleep while the mercantile was being robbed. You snored through the saloon's last riot. You'd have sat back and put your feet up if _she_ hadn't been in there. So what is it about her that makes you give a damn?"

He didn't understand, he couldn't understand… Miss Duncan's ugly face and innocence had plowed past Jaime's defenses as regular, pretty features and a charming smile had not done in over a decade. For as unpleasant as he found her, he couldn't deny that she was honesty and decency in a world that Jaime had long thought had seen the last of either. It— she— needed to be preserved. Protected.

And it was clear as crystal that she didn't have the sense the gods gave a goose. Someone else would have to keep her alive. Not Jaime, no, at least not permanently, but as long as the mad creature was in Dorne… and he had nothing else to do, anyway, not being able to shoot for another two months…

Satisfied with his justification, he looked up from where he'd been blindly contemplating Bronn's boots to find the man in them watching him with an expression of unholy glee.

"Dreamy-eyed as a young girl at her first dance," he hooted in delight. "Never thought I'd see the day when Jaime Lannister fell in love, let alone with the ugliest woman in Westeros."

Jaime blinked in horrified shock. "I'm _not_," he protested while Bronn laughed in his face, then huffed out a sigh. "I know you don't give a damn about anyone but yourself, but… hasn't anything ever mattered to you? Enough to fight for it?"

Bronn stared at him, uncomprehending.

"Yes, she's ugly. And infuriating. But despite it all… she's _good_, Bronn. She's a truly good person. And when was the last time you saw one of those?" He kicked at the leg of the battered old desk. "Precious few decent folk left in the world."

"What would you know about decent and good?" Bronn quipped, but the expression on his face was a little shaken, as if he were disturbed by Jaime's behavior, and maybe he was. Jaime never acted like this, ever; he had a reputation as devil-may-care, with a well-known motto of sticking his neck out for no one and nothing. He was a man who'd left a life of wealth and luxury to live rough and ride the desert in search of criminals. To hear him suddenly wittering on about goodness and decency must have been alarming in the extreme.

"I know it when I see it," he was all he could find to say. "Apparently, it's an inch taller than I am, stubborn as a ten-mule team, and determined to get herself killed because she won't tell a lie."

A train whistled sounded in the distance, announcing its imminent arrival in Ghost Hill.

"That's me," he said, reaching for the handle to his battered old carpet bag, the tiny embroidered gold lions mostly worn off and the red background near black after years of hard use. With a last nod, he left the jail, knowing Bronn stared at him the entire way.

Climbing onto the train, Jaime managed to bump his injured hand into everything possible. Odd how one took something for granted; he vowed that, from this point forward, never again would he fail to appreciate the use of all his limbs and everything else that made life worth living.

Yandel had caged his hand between two thin slabs of wood, to immobilize and keep it from flexing, then wrapped it in a mile of bandages he was to have changed twice a day. Jaime felt like a fool, toting such a noticeable and unwieldy thing around, but there was nothing for it, not if he wanted to actually be able to use the damned thing once more.

Once seated, he made sure his money— his bounty, what Miss Duncan had left for him at the bank, and what he'd gotten back from the hotel— was secure in a trouser pocket, the better to protect from some nimble-fingered thief trying to slip a hand under his jacket lapel. His bag, holding every scrap he owned, was securely placed between his booted feet. Surveying his surroundings— he was the only fool determined to leave Ghost Hill at this early hour— he nestled deeper into the seat's shabby velvet upholstery, dropped his hat over his face, and fell asleep.

Jaime woke a few hours later to the insistent shrill of the train's whistle and gazed out the window to see Sunspear's distinctive skyline of slender parapets and gold domes come into view around a turn. He felt a flare of anxiety under his ribs; what if he couldn't find her? He had an idea that she'd be at the Grand Allyrian, well-off woman like her who wasn't afraid to spend a dragon. If she weren't there, he'd have to track her down at one of the other hotels. With her height and looks, it might not be too hard, but Sunspear was a proper city, even if a small one, and people often didn't pay attention to others. She wouldn't stand out as much there as she had in Ghost Hill.

Still, he had to try. He _had_ to talk the crazy woman out of her mad scheme, and the strength of his need to do it puzzled him. He spent the rest of the trip wondering what the hell he was doing, what motive he could possibly have for interfering in Miss Duncan's life to this extent, what he thought he might accomplish merely by talking to her.

_She doesn__'t know these men,_ he thought. _She__'s lucky she came to me first._ He, at least, wouldn't harm her. The idea made his stomach churn. If she'd gone to the others first, she might already be either robbed, raped, murdered, or all three. Martell wouldn't rape her, but he wouldn't have to. With great handsomeness came great responsibility, and Jaime had always taken it seriously. He knew better than most how it was to throw caution to the wind and just live in the moment and worry about consequences later.

But he had a feeling Miss Duncan had no practice in withstanding a concerted effort at seduction. He'd seen the flutter of her pale lashes, heard her indrawn breath, when he'd kissed her hand in greeting. What if he'd touched her face, traced her lips with his fingertips, murmured in her ear? Palmed her hips, blown a cool breath over her throat? She'd have quivered into a mass of sensation like all the other women he'd done that to, that's what.

_Or else she__'d have shoved me away and punched me in the nose_, he thought, unable to suppress a grin. _Even odds on that happening._ There was something of the warrior in her. The way she'd elbowed Vargo Hoat had dropped the man like a sack of shit, beautiful to see, and very well-deserved.

But… what if she didn't resist? What if she went along with it, to her ruin? He thought of Miss Duncan seduced, perhaps even left with a baby, while Martell sauntered back to Sunspear with her money and her heart, leaving her to raise a bastard in shame. His left hand clenched on his thigh into a fist that longed to pound Martell into a pulp, and nothing had even _happened_ yet.

He shuddered to think of what could occur if she tried further afield, should Martell refuse her. But everyone knew what dire straights the Martells were in, how expensive that ghastly old pile of stones cost to keep up, and it couldn't be cheap, raising that passel of bastards… five thousand dragons would go far in supporting Oberyn's ever-expanding family. He would do it, and gladly.

Jaime took a deep breath and decided to hope for the best. He'd done what he could to persuade her, when she'd asked him; now he had to trust that he could find her before she did anything rash.

When the train shuddered to a halt, Jaime went to the first hack he could find, then impatiently drummed his fingers on his knee as they crept through traffic toward the Grand Allyrian. Frequent glances at his watch showed how quickly the minutes crept by as they inched down the street. The sun blazed down, heat radiating through the hack's roof, and the scent of horseshit on the cobblestones was rank in his nose.

Upon arrival at the hotel, Jaime sprang from the hack and hastened inside. The relief from the heat was instantaneous, but he wasted no time reveling in the cool leafy shade offered by the lobby's plethora of indoor trees and vines, only arrowed straight in the direction of the reception desk.

"Is Miss Brienne Duncan a patron here?" he asked the clerk with his most winning smile.

The clerk reddened, his gaze lingering, and a little _ding!_ of recognition sounded in Jaime's mind. It would not be the first time another man found him attractive, and wouldn't be the last, either. He was not above using it to his advantage and propped an elbow on the desk, leaning in and letting his smile take a turn for the flirtatious.

The clerk swallowed heavily. "She left. Not long ago. Forty minutes, maybe? No more than that. The doorman might know more."

Jaime's heavy-lidded eyes brightened. His smile widened. "Thanks," he drawled, sauntering away, and the clerk swallowed again.

The doorman was more helpful. "Requested a hack to the Sandship about a half-hour ago," he told Jaime succinctly, hand out for the tip he expected for this bit of news, and Jaime was only to happy to provide the man with a few stags for his trouble.

If he took another hack, it would take him forever to get through the mid-day traffic, but the Martells' crumbling old castle wasn't far away as the crow flew. Jaime decided to nip through the labyrinth of alleys he'd come to know well over his years in Dorne, and before too long was jogging up the tall fan of steps leading up to the Sandship's grandiose entrance.

.

* * *

.

"So, Miss Duncan, what do you need of me?" asked Mr. Martell. "Somehow I don't think it has anything to do with needing ranch borders defended or rival farmers needing to be convinced to do fair business."

Brienne opened her mouth to explain herself, but he continued to speak.

"By the gods, you're magnificent. I've never seen the like," he murmured almost absently, as if to himself, while his eyes roamed over her with unabashed appreciation. "Whatever you've come for, the answer is yes."

She was left speechless. Never in her life had such an adjective been applied to her. She had no idea what to say in response. 'You're mad' came to mind, but that seemed terribly rude in reaction to such a lavish compliment.

She made herself stammer out the whole plan to him, her heart sinking as, with every detail revealed, his face grew more and more amazed and amused. When she finished, he let out a deep, musical laugh.

"But I have the feeling that you have an… understanding… with Miss Ellaria," Brienne hurried to add. "I would not want to cause any tension between you, even though this arrangement would be purely professional, and I'd in no way intrude between you—"

"Ellaria would not in the least mind your intrusion between us," Mr. Martell interrupted gently, shifting from his chaise to hers in a single smooth move. He sat close beside her, taking her hand once more, holding it tenderly in one of his own and stroking from fingertips to wrist with the other. "In fact, she would insist upon it."

_Well_. It was clear that Mr. Martell meant to seduce her, and that Miss Ellaria meant to join him. In a flash of clarity, Brienne realized that, just as some of the girls in the saloons and pillow houses were intimates despite sharing a gender, Miss Ellaria was fond of such things as well. The idea of it— of Brienne being the focus of the woman's attentions— made her feel very strange, half intrigued and half horrified.

Cool air over her forearm jerked her mind to her surroundings once more, and she found that while she'd been woolgathering, Mr. Martell had used her distraction to his advantage, nimbly unbuttoning and turning back her cuff until her arm was half-exposed. As she watched, frozen in alarm, he trailed warm fingertips up the tender inside, along the milky flesh, until they hovered over the throbbing blue vein in the fold of her elbow.

"I can feel your heart beating," he murmured, gazing up at her through inky lashes. To her shock, he lifted her hand to his mouth and closed his lips around the pulse of her wrist. There was heat, and moisture, and suction, while Brienne scarcely breathed. "Did you know that the deepest heartbeat in the body lies at the crease of the thigh, where it joins the body?" he inquired in silky tones.

Immediately, she thought of lips there, just at the juncture of her legs, but instead of Mr. Martell, they belonged to Mr. Lannister, green eyes gleaming and devilish as he glanced up to gauge her reaction, and she bolted to her feet, breaking from his grasp.

"This… I don't think… you've been kind… no, thank you," she managed.

The dimness of the room felt oppressive, suddenly, and the incense turned the air cloying and thick. The taste of the tea lay heavy and oversweet on her tongue, and Brienne realized belatedly that the mint and honey had disguised the fact that the tea was quiet alcoholic in content. Her head swam and she swayed on her feet. To her chagrin, for the very first time in her life, Brienne fainted.


	7. Chapter 7

Jaime had been to Martell's ludicrous castle a time or two before, so he was prepared for the paucity of servants. He lacked familiarity with the labyrinthine network of corridors and loggias and courtyards, however, and soon found himself hopelessly lost.

He decided to let his ears guide him; if he followed the sound of the waves crashing upon the prow of the Sandship, he'd eventually find the balcony overlooking the sea, where Martell and his lover and their clutch of bastards most enjoyed lounging about, sunning themselves like lizards in the scorching sunlight.

What he heard, instead, was a shout by Martell for his paramour.

"Ellaria!" Martell called, humor in his voice. "Bring the girls. I need all of you."

Jaime hastened toward the voice and the pattering of swift feet that followed.

"What happened?" Ellaria demanded breathlessly, up the corridor and around the corner, it seemed like.

"She propositioned me, and when I accepted, she fainted," Martell replied, and Jaime could hear the smile in his voice. It made him irritable, at the other man's amusement at Miss Duncan's expense and how he viewed it as a proposition instead of a business agreement.

Martell did not seem concerned by the fact that the woman had passed out. It was likely she wasn't accustomed to the extreme Dornish climate, and if her awkward presentation to Jaime the day before were any indication, she had no practice whatsoever in matters such as this. She was probably perishing of embarrassment, overheated, and if she'd decided to wear the stupidly constricting clothes most women trussed themselves up in, of course she'd have fainted.

He broke into a jog and pursued the voices, coming to a door of carved wooden slats, slung open to reveal the entirety of Martell's family hovering in a close circle around Miss Duncan's unconscious form spread flat-out on the carpeted floor.

"I'm certain it has to do with all these tight things," Martell was saying, his brown hands in shocking contrast to the sheer white of Miss Duncan's blouse as he reached to unfasten the pearl buttons at her throat.

"Yes, the blouse must come off. The corset as well," Ellaria agreed immediately, her face avid. Around them, their daughters shared a grin, used to their parents' antics. Jaime's irritation flared into outright anger.

"Get your hands off her," he demanded.

They froze, and all eyes flew to him; similar expressions of surprise flitted over their faces.

Ellaria was the first to recover. "Mr. Lannister," she purred. "We were not expecting you, but you're most welcome."

_I bet I am_, he thought sourly; the few moments he'd passed with her in the past had been spent fending off her advances. She had in mind an interlude with both him and Martell, and he had a suspicion that he himself would be the one shared around, not her. If it had just been her, he might have considered it, but… Martell, as well? No.

"What did you do to her?" he demanded in response to Ellaria's dulcet welcome, because as he studied Miss Duncan's prostrate form, he had the unswerving conviction that her stalwart soul would not possibly have passed out without a damned good reason, and 'mortification' was not one of them.

As Jaime approached, the passel of daughters backed away with wide eyes. The room stank thickly of incense, and overhead was a blue haze of smoke. With a sigh, he resigned himself to smelling like a Pentoshi whorehouse for the rest of the day.

He dropped to his knees at Miss Duncan's side, scrutinizing her. She looked far less militant, almost peaceful, when unconscious, and he felt a moment's sympathy because he knew only too well how it was to be tense most of the time. He hadn't been able to truly let his guard down since leaving Casterly Rock, and perhaps even before then, thanks to Cersei.

But through the velvet fog of the incense was something sharper, cutting through the thick of it, and it was rising from Miss Duncan. Leaning in, he sniffed near her face. Her mouth, slightly open, emitted a minty, liquor-soaked breath and Jaime clenched his teeth to keep from shouting. He'd bet money she wasn't at all used to drinking spirits, and he'd had Starfall iced tea before; it was enough to knock even a hard drinker like Bronn on his ass. A lightweight like Miss Duncan… she had only her size to thank for the fact that she was merely unconscious and not ill, at that moment.

He slanted a glare at Martell, who held up his hands in a pose of perfect innocence. "She gulped two glasses of it before we knew it, and became a bit agitated—"

"Owing nothing to you, I suppose?" Jaime all but snarled. "Let's get her off the floor, at least."

"Oh, but you're injured," cooed one of the daughters, reaching out to carefully take his bandaged hand between her own. He couldn't tell which of them it was, nor could he even remember any of their names. They were all of a similar look, brown of skin and dark of hair and eye, with lithe bodies well-displayed in their filmy silks. The girl looked up from his hand through her lashes, the picture of innocent beguilement. "You must let us do it, instead."

Jaime detached himself from her, eyes narrow. "Go ahead, then."

They arranged themselves around her unmoving form. Martell put his hands under her arms, Ellaria gripped her ankles, and their daughters were arrayed on either side to hoist her hips, but despite a concerted effort, they managed to lift her only a few inches before their power gave out.

_Pathetic_, Jaime thought with a sneer.

"Lift her knees," he directed, and when another of the daughters did so, he crouched down and carefully slid his right arm under them. He put his left arm under her shoulders, and then he rocked back on his heels. With one effort, he had her up and hovering a foot from the floor; with another, he rose to full height. She was an armful, that was sure, all muscle to go with her height, and Jaime couldn't help but be impressed.

He was glad he only had to go a few steps to reach the chaise lounge, and laid her on it with the least amount of jostling to his hand as possible. He glanced around to find the Martells all watching him with something akin to amazement, and a wave of impatience swept over him. Now was not the time for them to be admiring his feats of strength.

"I presume you know the young lady?" Ellaria asked with almost-convincing meekness, hands folded demurely in front of her. "Your protectiveness of her is, er, surprising."

_You know_ _nothing__ about me_, he thought savagely.

"Yes," he confirmed, but said no more, staring down at her slackened features. Without her extraordinary eyes open, there was nothing to temper the harsh planes and awkward angles of her features. It was almost shocking, how poorly shaped they were and how terribly they fit with each other. She looked as if a particularly untalented child had sculpted her, and yet there was something compelling about her, something that spoke of perseverance and courage.

"Shall we leave you alone?" Martell said from beside him, and Jaime glanced at the other man to find Martell watching him with an expression of understanding that Jaime instantly loathed.

_You understand nothing, about either her or me._

"Yes," he said shortly, looking back at Miss Duncan.

The padding of footsteps announced their withdrawal from the room, and the door was gently closed behind them. Jaime went to the incense burner, smothering it with the brass lid before crossing to the windows and throwing open the shutters. Without their shield, the full brunt of the sun pierced the room, but fresh sea air billowed in, clearing the soupy funk away in short order.

He resumed his seat at her side and thought about how to rouse her. Martell's instinct to loosen her clothing was correct, if not his lascivious pleasure in making it happen. Jaime finished what the other man had started, though his own fingers were far less nimble at the job; it was not easy to unfasten a dozen tiny buttons with only one hand. He managed, though, opening her blouse to the top of her low corset even as he noticed that one of her sleeves had been undone and dangled limply around her arm.

It was a strong arm, long and sturdy, but where a man's would be corded with muscle, hers was still softer, moon-pale and downy-soft with a light dusting of almost-white hairs. Her throat, emerging from the white batiste and framed by pearls, was long and the skin was as sleek as satin. There was grace and beauty in her, even if the dimensions were bigger than the average woman's, and it made a lurching sensation occur deep within him. Yesterday's sense of longing, like his ribs had cracked open and something from within their cage was straining toward her, swelled and with it came the same reaction of rage.

_She has no right to make me want her_, he thought, infuriated.

"Wake up," he said harshly, hand on her shoulder and shaking her, lightly at first and then harder when she did not respond. "Brienne Duncan, wake up."

Her blonde eyelashes fluttered; her lips parted further and she sucked in a breath.

"Wake up," Jaime insisted, and finally she opened her eyes.

Their impact hit him like a hammer to the forehead, _blue blue blue_, and she did the worst possible thing she could have done: she smiled at him, so open, clearly glad to see him, to see _him_, and Jaime was torn between snarling at her and, just maybe, weeping, because when was the last time someone had been pleased that he was near?

Whores didn't count; customers paying him to settle disputes didn't count. Bronn happy to have one more outlaw off his hands didn't count. She was none of those things to him. She was… she was something else, to him. He didn't know quite what, but it was something that scared the fuck out of him, made him want to flee from her and chase after her and—

She struggled to prop herself up on her elbows, but Jaime's hand on her bare sternum pressed her back into the deep-cushioned damask of the chaise.

"Feeling better?" Jaime asked, his voice tight, and watched in grim satisfaction as her glad smile dimmed.

.

* * *

.

Brienne floated on a deep wave, weightless and free, like when she'd been a child and gone swimming with her brother and sisters, while their parents watched and laughed from the shore. They were all dead now, and she was all that was left, a sad remnant of what had been a large and happy family. The memory faded like a ghost, lingering only in a pang of yearning that she steadfastly banished. Wishing for the impossible did no one any favors. She'd learned that long ago, when she'd prayed and prayed for the gods to make her less ugly, or less tall, or less awkward.

Then she opened her eyes and found Jaime Lannister looming over her, and thought, _well, maybe some wishes come true _.

The absurdity of it made her smile, because oh, he was handsome, and why was he there? It was preposterous to even consider it, but… could it be for her? Was it possible that he'd followed her to Sunspear, that he felt the same pull toward her as she did for him?

His face was unreadable, his expression carefully blank, and she tried to sit up but his hand, big and warm, came to rest on her chest, pushing her down to lay flat once more.

"Feeling better?" It was a considerate question but his tone was anything but, almost a sneer, and abruptly Brienne's pleasure to see him drained away.

"I… was," she said cautiously. "Why are you angry at me?"

"I'm an angry man," he replied tersely. "Haven't you noticed?"

She hadn't, and felt a bit stupid about that. She'd thought him rude and improper, but hadn't pondered the reason behind it. Made perfect sense, of course; happy people didn't mock and taunt others. But she was fairly certain she hadn't done anything to cause or deserve his anger— besides getting him shot, that was— and the idea that he was blaming her for something roused her own ire.

"Well, you've no right to take it out on me," she groused, scowling up at him. The way he was bent over her, enclosing her within the frame of his body, had her hemmed in like a veal calf and it was making her nervous in a way she'd never been, not like Mr. Martell had earlier. Usually when men got too close, she just pounded them and they went away and left her alone. Mr. Lannister was far, far too close, and yet pounding him was the last thing on her mind. "Let me up."

He scowled back but didn't move. "I should leave you here," he told her. "Shouldn't have come in the first place. Shouldn't have stayed."

"Then why did you?" she demanded waspishly. "No one made you come all the way from Ghost Hill, and shouldn't you be resting, anyway? I know for a fact that the maester—"

As she spoke, the muscles in his face tightened more and more, around his eyes and mouth, until he looked only moments from either shouting or striking her. She braced for the impact of either, but his method of assault was nothing she could have predicted.

He _kissed _her.

Eyes narrowing, jaw set hard, there was no warning of his intention. One moment Mr. Lannister was looming over her like a bad omen, and the next, he had swooped down and covered her lips with his own.

It wiped Brienne's mind as blank as a new slate. She had been kissed before, but not like that, not with the whole mouth. Shock and eagerness had her opening for him. His lips were firm and sure, effortlessly robbing her of her will, dominating her with pleasure, and his tongue was like warm velvet against hers. With each stroke, any scrap of resistance she might have managed dissolved a bit more. Without conscious thought, she arched against him, and her hands slid up his neck to tangle in his hair.

His mouth moved in a slow, relentless rhythm, sparking a feverish rush of pleasure that rolled down her limbs. Each place their bodies touched burned like a hot iron; his hard hip pressed to the softness of her thigh, his weight braced on his hand right by her shoulder. He was breathing heavily, raggedly, as if he'd just run a race. And each time he inhaled, his chest just brushed her breasts, each feather-light sensation eliciting an acute spark of sensation at their tips.

He pulled back, leaving her lips tingling, wet from his kiss. She opened her eyes, needing to see him, to discover what he was thinking. He was staring down at her, for once no gleam of mockery in those green, green eyes. He seemed almost shaken, a faint frown creasing his brow. His gaze pinned her, intense, slightly puzzled, as if she were some enigma or mystery.

"What are you doing to me?" he murmured, but didn't give her any time to answer. Before she could say a word, he was kissing her again.

Brienne's body rose to meet his, her mouth open to receive his tongue, and the heat and power of him seemed to radiate through her clothing. She quivered in his grasp, rolling in a long shudder of awareness and arousal. Suddenly his hand was on her breast, caressing and teasing, prising her nipple up over the edge of her corset and sending bolts of sensation through her. She trembled under his hand and he groaned softly.

It was the groan that began to make her come to her senses. It sounded like the purr of a self-satisfied cat, deep and low, seductive and wicked and smug and arrogant and everything that had infuriated her about him in the first place. It brought her to a shocked awareness of what she was doing: laying flat on her back in a stranger's home, accepting the most shocking advances from a man whom she had only just met the day before. A man who cared nothing for her, who in fact seemed to actively dislike her.

What in the world was she allowing him to do? She hardly knew him, and what she did know hardly recommended him to her. He had refused her, mocked her, insulted her, and she was letting him kiss and fondle her like one of the fancy girls at the Silver Slipper.

Brienne detached herself from his mouth— reluctantly, it must be admitted— and pressed her hands to his shoulders. "Let me up," she commanded, though it came out pitifully weak.

His soft huff of laughter blew cooling air over her damp lips. "I doubt you can stand, just now," he said, and there was smug pride in his eyes, as well as amusement, and a certain careless possessiveness.

_He thinks I am his for the taking. _Brienne was incredulous. The realization firmed her resolve as nothing else would have. She was an ugly woman, of uncommon size, but she was not easy. Even if she had behaved that way for a minute. Or two. Fury flamed to life in her belly, to war with the desire already lit there.

Mr. Lannister bent and kissed her again, his tongue teasing at her closed mouth, and his teeth nipped gently at her lower lip, demanding entrance. And she longed to give it, to open and welcome him, to allow him whatever he wanted. But the image of his pleased smirk burned behind her eyelids and she brought up a hand, flattening it squarely over his face to thrust it away from her own.

He only grinned down at her, shifting to evade her outthrust palm, and she knew he intended to kiss her again. With a sigh of resignation, she tensed her arms and gave him a hard shove to the shoulders. He flew backwards, tumbling off the chaise to land in a heap on the floor. Brienne clambered to her feet, glaring down at him while he took his time standing, and the look on his face promised retribution. For a moment, she thought he might actually strike her, and she shifted her weight to the balls of her feet in anticipation. If he thought her a pushover, he was in for a rude awakening. She could scrap with the best of them, and he'd learn it the hard way.

"Why are you here?" she demanded. "Did you just come to insult me?"

"Only you would think a kiss was an insult," he shot back.

"It is the way _you _do it," she snapped.

He misunderstood her meaning, appearing to take it as a criticism of his technique rather than his motivation. His eyes grew hot and dark as he stepped forward, reaching for her once more as if to prove her wrong, and Brienne felt true conflict within her, because she doubted she'd be able to reject him again.

She stepped back, buttoning her blouse all the way up to her chin once more, and when she spoke, it came out far more soft and pleading than she intended.

"_Don't_," she said, almost whispering it, and it stopped him in his tracks. "Why are you here?"

He didn't answer for a protracted moment, a strange tension beginning and rising the longer it lasted.

"For you," he said at last, his voice hoarse, sounding like it was being dragged out of him. "I came for you."


	8. Chapter 8

"For me?" Miss Duncan whispered, eyes huge in her pale face, the freckles standing out as if someone had dotted her face in light brown paint. He tamped down the urge to touch and count each one.

There was something witchy about the woman. There had to be; how else had he come to say that to her? Some arcane power was in her eyes. She had only to look at him and he did the most absurd things, like telling her he'd marry her if she'd let him bed her, and admitting that his hurried chase across the sands of Dorne was because of her, and kissing her.

Kissing her. Gods, what had he been thinking? Had he been thinking at all? He doubted it, looking back. She'd been laying there, eyes flashing up at him, argumentative as always, and he'd just wanted to— shut her up, teach her a lesson, show her who was in charge, but instead he'd been the one silenced and chastened. She tasted of mint and innocence, the shy caress of her lips appealing in a way he could not have predicted.

Her lack of experience had not kept her from expressing herself, though— her hands had been busy on his shoulders, in his hair, and once she'd gotten over her surprise, she'd kissed him back with a passion he hadn't had from a woman in years.

And then she'd changed her mind and knocked him on his ass. Jaime wasn't able to decide whether to laugh or fume over that, a quandary he'd found himself in repeatedly over the course of— could it be only a single day? Was it possible?— the time they'd known each other.

Just when he wanted to scream at her, or leave and never see her ugly face again, she'd look at him with those eyes, peer right into his soul, and he'd end up yammering something to her that he was barely able to admit to himself.

Anger, pure and righteous, rose up from deep within, to his profound relief. Who the hell did she think she was, demanding answers from him? Pushing him away like a beggar? After he'd gone to the effort of picking her up off the floor— no mean feat— and coming to Sunspear in the first place? His fury had nothing to do with her rejecting his kiss. None at all.

"Because you're too stupid to take care of yourself," he found himself telling her, and was perversely satisfied when the soft, hopeful look vanished from her face, replaced by stony hostility. "You ought to be blowing me kisses instead of throwing me around. If I hadn't been here, you'd be halfway to naked right now. Martell and Ellaria would have their hands all over you."

He steadfastly ignored the twinge of arousal that burgeoned at the idea of her stripped and stretched out over the chaise between them, all that skin and strength and heat there for him to—

"Only for you to do it yourself," she shot back.

"I don't recall you complaining overmuch."

She snorted gracelessly in derision. "I think shoving you off with my hand in your face served perfectly as a complaint."

"Took your time getting there, though."

She went scarlet, at that reminder, because there was no way to dispute it. She had not only permitted his touch, his caresses and kisses, she had returned them. The sensory memory of her against him, the sensation of her lips on his, refused to stop scrolling in his head, like how the saloon's cheap player piano would get stuck on a single tune.

"What, no denial?" he taunted, moving closer, until he could see the delicate fluttering of the pulse in her throat. Knowing he was able to affect her this powerfully made him exult like little else, these days.

She fisted her hands at her sides and tilted her chin up, glaring defiantly at him without speaking. She wasn't going to lie and say she'd felt nothing, but she wasn't going to admit it, either. It was bizarrely endearing. Her commitment to honesty, even at the cost of her own pride, was astonishing, and grudgingly, Jaime recognized the spark of respect he already had for her flaring into a tiny flame.

Honest, yes, but not averse to simply running away when she couldn't deny a truth; she turned and left the room with a militant air. Jaime followed on her heels, feeling alive in a way he hadn't in years, light and amused and eager to provoke her even more. Before he could continue haranguing her, however, Martell and Ellaria reappeared.

Miss Duncan lurched to a stop, and Jaime almost ran into her, stopping a mere inch away.

"You're leaving?" said Ellaria with a charming pout. "We were hoping to entice you to stay longer, perhaps have lunch with us."

"Both of you," added Martell with a gleaming smile, the appreciation in his dark eyes like a caress as he gazed at Jaime over Miss Duncan's shoulder.

Jaime only just managed to repress a shudder of revulsion. He didn't concern himself with what men might get up to with each other, but he did not want to be involved in any way.

"Thank you for your kindness while I was indisposed," Miss Duncan said politely, her shoulders so rigid they were nearly vibrating. "But I don't think an arrangement between us will work. I'm sorry for taking your time."

Ellaria and Martell's faces fell; it would almost be hilarious if it weren't because Miss Duncan were thwarting their plans to seduce her.

"Are you sure, Miss Duncan?" asked Martell. His suave accent made it sound like _Meese Dooncahn _and set Jaime's teeth on edge. "I would very much enjoy showering you with devotion." His smile was very white against his brown skin, glinting like the blade of a sharp knife. "It would not even be a pretense on my part. We could give your dear friend a very convincing portrayal of an intimate couple."

Jaime's hand came to Miss Duncan's waist, mere seconds from doing something rash. The touch of it made her jerk, as if she hadn't realized his proximity until then, and she stepped away from him until she was able to view all of them at once.

"That's very kind of you," she said carefully. Jaime admired her restraint; he'd have been throwing punches left and right by that point, were it him. Hell, he still might. "But no. I would not be comfortable coming between the established relationship you have with Miss Ellaria."

She offered them all a tight smile before turning and striding away. Jaime shot the other two a smirk and sauntered after her. Her pace was swift and purposeful and she soon outdistanced him. It was no surprise when he finally freed himself of the Sandship's labyrinth of corridors to find her heaving herself into a hack without a backward glance.

As before, he took the back roads of Sunspear to the Grand Allyrion and was ensconced in the lobby, legs stretched out and hands comfortably clasped over his middle, when she arrived. As he watched her sail through the lobby, he admired the purposefulness of her movement and the determined angle of her chin. She had not yet done up the cuffs of her jacket and blouse and they flapped with every stride. The reminder of how Martell and Ellaria had been undressing her while she was out of her senses cemented his belief that she was too naive to be gadding about Westeros by her lonesome.

Jaime knew the moment she spotted him: her step faltered, her shoulders tightened, her lips parted in surprise. There was no smile for him this time, however; she pinched her mouth tight in displeasure, tossed her head to the side like an over-spirited mare, and walked right past. Jaime laughed, delighted, and sprang to his feet to give chase.

"That," he said upon reaching her, "was a flounce, Miss Duncan."

"Ridiculous," she muttered with a sideways glance at him as they arrived at the desk. "My key, please. Room three-oh-six."

"Of course," said the clerk, but before he was able to place the key in her outstretched hand, Jaime plucked it from the man's fingers.

"Take a walk with me," he said to her. "Give me a chance to show you what a complete idiot you are."

Her pale brows lifted, offended and incredulous. He only smiled winningly at her.

"Just a walk. An hour. Then I'll go back to Ghost Hill and you can go back to wherever you're from and never see me again."

The idea of it did not sit well with him; she needed someone to ensure she wasn't doing anything stupid, someone realistic and canny about the ways of the world.

_Well, it won't be me_, he thought severely, and ignored the pang of apprehension it sent through him.

She stared at him in silence for a long, fraught moment, and once again it seemed to Jaime like her eyes were piercing through to the very heart of him. What did she see, when she looked at him? He'd been projecting a façade of cavalier toughness for so long that he sometimes forgot who he was, or had ever been. He'd reinvented himself, upon coming to Dorne. His name might still be Jaime Lannister, but the man within bore little to no resemblance to the one who'd left Casterly Rock all those years ago.

Her shoulders relaxed, just a fraction, in surrender. "Just a walk? And after that, you'll leave me alone?"

He nodded. "The moment we're done, if you tell me to go, I'll go."

Miss Duncan heaved a sigh. "Fine."

"Excellent." He flashed a grin at the clerk, who'd been staring at him with mouth agape for the entire exchange. The clerk promptly turned the color of a beet and hastened to return the key to its hook on the wall behind him. Jaime filed away the young man's reaction— never knew when it could come in handy— and presented his arm to Miss Duncan. "Shall we?"

For a moment, she resisted, and she was so formidable in size and strength that he had the alien and oddly pleasurable thought that he was not able to move her unless she wished to be moved. At least, not without making a scene. He knew he could heft her over his shoulder and cart her around, but even he drew the line at manhandling and abducting a woman in a public place in broad daylight.

With what sounded delightfully like a growl, she acquiesced at last. When she took his arm, he was able to sense a quiver run through her at his touch.

_Good. _He was relieved at the confirmation that he wasn't the only one of them prickling with awareness of the other. He'd suspected it, had seen it on her face in his boarding house, during those fraught few moments they'd stared at each other. And he knew what he'd seen at Martell's, during the kiss that seemed like it was shaking the foundations of the entire world.

He'd spent more than a few passing moments, on the train that morning, wondering about how it would be, to kiss her, to have her big hands in his hair, to run his own hands over her strong limbs and sturdy frame. He'd wondered if he'd be able to taste her innocence, her honesty and decency, and found himself craving the knowledge.

The answer to all his questions was _yes_. Yes, she was everything good in the world, far too good for the likes of him, and it was far too unwise for her to wander through Dorne, making preposterous requests of dangerous strangers. She needed to go home, to safely await the arrival of her overbearing friend. There was even a chance the husband this Sansa was bringing for Miss Duncan would appeal and they'd wed, after all. Perhaps this time next year she'd even have given the man a child.

Jaime steadfastly ignored the distaste the idea inspired and focused merely on the task at hand: a walk, an explanation, hopefully a capitulation on her part. Nothing could be simpler.

They walked down the sidewalk together, almost perfectly matched in height and stride. He appreciated not having to slow down to match the shorter steps of a petite woman. The day's agitation faded, leaving only a sense of pleasure: it was a clear day, no one was shooting at him, and he was about to spend an hour with a— well, not a beautiful lady, but a compelling one, for certain. He was content not to speak, just enjoying the brush of her skirts against his leg and the warm grip of her hand on his arm.

After a few minutes, Miss Duncan cleared her throat and Jaime turned his head to look at her. From the side, the irregularity of her nose had a sculptural quality, the way it descended from her forehead in a series of bumps like a staircase viewed in profile. It reminded him of the exterior of that huge pyramid in Meereen, and he realized how alike it and she were: monumental, solid, breathtaking in their sheer size. Though he was coming to think that her size had more to do with her spirit than the fleshly form that housed it.

That panicky sensation bloomed in his stomach the way it always did when his thoughts about her edged toward the premise that she might, in some way, _matter_ to him. And like every time when he felt vulnerable, his mouth started moving without much direct instruction from his brain.

.

* * *

.

Brienne squinted down at Mr. Lannister's cocked elbow in suspicion but took it, tall enough that her hand clasped his bicep instead of his forearm as most ladies would have done. The bulge of it, evident even through the fabric of his clothing, was enough to inspire another surge of that same wild impulse she'd had back in Mr. Martell's castle, when he'd kissed her.

He'd kissed her. Not just a peck on the cheek, but a full exploration of each other, her flat on her back and him ranged over her. She'd put her arms around him, pulled him closer, given herself up to him entirely. It still didn't quite seem possible. Perhaps she had imagined it all? The very idea of it made her mouth go dry.

With a slight shake of the head, Brienne permitted him to steer her down the bustling, sun-dappled sidewalk.

"You don't have the sense the gods gave a goose," he said suddenly, the undercurrent of warm teasing abruptly gone from his voice. "How have you stayed alive so long?"

Brienne stopped in her tracks to stare at him, speechless.

"It's a valid question," he said in response to her unspoken offense. He kept walking, but would not release her hand, so she was forced to follow or topple over.

"But not yours to ask!" she protested, aggrieved. "You have no right to such impertinent questions."

"Of course I do," he said easily. "You asked me to marry you, after all. We're practically betrothed."

"You said no," she muttered when she was able to think of something to say to that. "We've only spent twenty minutes with each other, all told."

"That's not what the maester said," he replied smugly. "He said you sat by my bedside for hours, until the very last moment before you had to get on the train, holding my hand and sponging my fevered brow."

Brienne wanted to refute his words but couldn't; it would be a lie. She _had _sat with him for hours, until she could not delay leaving for the station any longer. At her continued silence, he ducked his head so he could peer into her downturned face.

"Well?" he prompted. "Am I wrong?"

"I felt responsible," she mumbled resentfully. "And there was no sponging. Or hand-holding."

In the strictest sense, at least: she had held his hand, but only to wash the blood off. But he did not need to know that.

"Well, you weren't responsible," Mr. Lannister informed her cheerfully.

"You're not responsible for me, either," she shot back.

"It's not responsibility I feel for you," he murmured, then blinked, seeming surprised, like he'd admitted something, but Brienne had no idea what.

A shaft of sunlight winkled between two buildings to land precisely on Mr. Lannister, as if the gods had planned it that exact way. The light sparked gold in his eyes, sending a jolt of… something… through her belly, the same tightening, urgent sensation she'd had when he'd kissed her. If indeed it had truly happened.

"What is it you feel, then?" she made herself ask through numb lips.

He cleared his throat and lowered his gaze to his bandaged hand. "A sense of… conscience, maybe? Reciprocation? Decency? You were kind to me when I wasn't able to take care of myself, when you didn't have to be, when it gained you nothing and actually cost you quite a bit. And now that you—"

"If you say that I can't take care of myself, I will punch you in the face," she growled, fist clenching in preparation.

His lips quirked at the humorous picture she must have presented, but soon the amusement drained away with a breath as his shoulders slumped. He looked like he was girding himself to say something unpleasant, and Brienne took a second to steel herself against whatever verbal slings and arrows he was about to send her way.

"Miss Duncan," he began at last, "I know you think I lack ambition and am sadly lackluster in appearance compared to what you were told, but I happen to be an excellent judge of character in addition to an only mediocre-looking wastrel."

He was going to be tetchy about that forever, she just knew it, and rolled her eyes to express how unimpressed she was with his pique. He ignored her to continue.

"You don't know the kind of men bounty hunters are. You bought into the romantic stories about us, and then, meeting me first… I'm a pain in the ass, but I'd never hurt a woman. The other bounty hunters… they're not like me, Miss Duncan."

"I'm starting to think there _are _no men like you, Mr. Lannister," said Brienne. It wasn't precisely a compliment.

"You noticed!" He gave her an arch smile and she rolled her eyes again. "In all seriousness… I really am a population of one when it comes to bounty hunters. I'm in it for the money, and if I manage to keep outlaws off the streets, that's good, too. But the rest of them… they _like_ the killing. And if they can get their hands on a woman, they'll have her whether she wants them to or not. And most of the time, she ends up dead, as well."

She opened her mouth to speak, but he forged ahead.

"I know you think you can take them, and maybe you'd be able to take one or two. But these men would see that as a challenge. And an insult, that you'd fight them instead of submitting. They'd bring more men than you could fend off, and you would end up raped and robbed and murdered. And I don't want you to end up that way. It would— I would—"

He stopped walking, making her halt as well, and faced her, unconcerned about the people having to sidestep around them or the hostile glances they received for blocking pedestrian traffic. An expression of upset crossed his face. For a moment, he looked truly distraught, and it made Brienne's breath catch, though she was confused. How could he feel so strongly about this?

"You would what?" she whispered when he went some moments without speaking.

"I would grieve," he said, the words sounding dragged out of him. "I have the idea that there are no women like _you_, Miss Duncan, and knowing you'd come to such an end would make me grieve."

She could not keep from sucking in a breath of surprise as she stared at him, scarcely believing her ears. Had he really said such a thing?

But if she were shocked, he was even moreso, lips parting as his eyes widened. They gazed at each other in frank amazement for long seconds, until he coughed and looked away, anger flitting across his features to replace the distress.

"I have to convince you that you're taking yourself off to certain disaster," he said at last, his tone hard, and began to walk again. "Do you believe me?"

She couldn't speak, words failing her. Despite his irritation— what was he upset about _this _time?— he lifted his left hand, let it hover over the hand she had curled around his arm, then covered it with his own. The heat and strength of him was wonderful, comforting and safe and _right_, and Brienne bit her lip to keep from sighing at the sensation. How was it possible for her to miss his touch when she'd only had it for a few fleeting moments, and for only the span of a day?

"Miss Duncan?" Mr. Lannister prodded. "Do you believe me?"


	9. Chapter 9

Brienne knew she should respond, that she should flee to her hotel room and never think about him again, but instead her other hand reached over and covered his, creating a stack in the crook of his elbow, almost as if they were clinging to each other, and indeed she was feeling a bit as if she needed the support he provided.

She was the slightest bit imbalanced by his words; just when she thought she had come to understand him, he presented yet another side of himself, and it was a side she could like, very much… if only he would keep from veering abruptly back toward cruelty and rudeness. It was impossible to know which was the real Jaime Lannister. Brienne felt like she was trying to traverse new territory without a map or compass. Who was he? And the person he was… was it someone she could trust not to lead her astray?

She stopped, pulling him away from the street to stand close to the nearest building, feeling bad about blocking foot traffic as he so obviously did _not_. She should have detangled herself from him, but… even in Sunspear's excessive heat, the warmth of him all along her side was welcome, and the way they were holding on to each other had her heart tripping as fast as a rabbit's.

"I believe you," she whispered at last, not lifting her gaze from their clasped hands.

Mr. Lannister did not reply, so she glanced over at him to find an odd look on his too-handsome face, as if he were pleased and concerned and angry all at the same time. It must have been difficult, to have such conflicting emotions and not be able to settle on one at a time.

_No wonder he is obnoxious, _she thought. _I would be, too, if I couldn't decide how I felt from moment to moment._

She had the wild impulse to seize his shoulders and shake him until he settled on a single, unconflicted feeling. Instead, she said, "Though I must say that this unexpected kindness has me confused."

His features resolved into humor, at that. "Oh, Miss Duncan, it has nothing to do with kindness. My conscience picked a fine time to resurrect itself from the ashes, is all." His grin was mischievous and coaxed an answering smile from her own reluctant lips, quickly hidden by ducking her head as they began to walk once more. "Besides, you've brought some much-needed excitement to my boring life."

Brienne scoffed as they entered the hotel lobby. "You cannot expect me to believe that the life of the most famous bounty hunter in Westeros is boring," she said after they'd retrieved their keys from the clerk.

"And yet it is," he said, supremely unconcerned with her skepticism. "You don't know how tedious it can be, riding through miles of desert after yet another outlaw. At this point, I'm so good at it that even apprehending them is dull. None of them put up any sort of a fight. None of them can match my speed or aim. It's like shooting fish in a barrel."

Mr. Lannister actually looked sulky about it, startling her into a laugh that she rushed to cover with a hand as her septa had always instructed, the better to hide 'those teeth of yours' from exposure. He reached out again, taking her hand once more, pulling it away from her face.

"Why hide it?" he asked, offering her a smile of his own. "I want to see it."

Brienne tumbled headlong over the precipice on which she had been perched, could practically hear the wind whistling past as she fell. Joy and misery coiled together in her heart, stole her breath, caused a rush of water to her eyes. Suddenly frightened from the force of it, she jerked away, yanking her arm free of his.

"I must go," she forced past her tightened throat, and turned blindly toward the grand staircase, taking the stairs two at a time and striding down the hallway at a near-run.

Brienne reached the door of her room without conscious thought, her senses returning in a surge as she fumbled with her key, struggling through the haze of tears to fit it into the hole. A hand entered her vision, gently taking the key and turning it in the lock. Jaime ushered her inside and shut the door behind them. The hustle and murmur of the rest of the hotel receded, leaving them cocooned in the hushed opulence of the room. Brienne fixed her gaze steadfastly on the dusty, worn toes of his boots, trying to keep her breathing even.

"Why did you leave like that?" he asked after a moment, very quietly. "What's wrong?"

_You're making me fall in love with you_, she thought miserably, _and I don't know what to do about it._

But of course she couldn't say so. She gulped down the lump in her throat and forced herself to say, "I'm just very tired, ser. It's been a long few days of traveling, and then I was very embarrassed to realize how silly my plan was, and I miss my home."

It was all the gods' honest truth; Brienne had only left out one little part of it. She took in the concern drawing Mr. Lannister's brows together, continuing, "And I am worried about what to do when Sansa arrives." She heaved in a breath. "With my _husband_."

"You'll say no," Mr. Lannister told her firmly. "That's what you'll do, Miss Duncan."

"Brienne," she said, wanting to hear him say it, at least once.

"Brienne." He smiled, and she felt like weeping again, but she managed to smile back, and this time she didn't hide it.

They beamed at each other for long moments, until Brienne noticed how dark it was in the room, little sunlight penetrating the heavy fringed draperies shrouding the windows, and none of the lamps lit. His eyes were dark, too, glittering with something she couldn't name but which excited her in a way she didn't know how to understand.

"I want to kiss you again," Mr. Lannister told her suddenly, and her breath caught. "Will you let me?"

Brienne could only stare at him, lips parting in shock, and his eyes dropped to them, lingering on her mouth like a touch.

"Will you let me, Brienne?" he asked, his voice pitched low and intimate as he edged closer. She felt like they were the only people in the hotel, in Dorne, in all the world.

"Yes," she said, faintly, barely a whisper, and he swallowed it as he slanted his mouth over hers, arms hard around her as he pulled her close.

Such heat, such softness… his lips worked against hers, coaxing them to respond, and she tried her best, unpracticed as she was. Everything felt magnetized, more profound; the soft brush of Mr. Lannister's beard against her cheek was like a caress over her whole body, and the scent of him rising in the air between them filled her lungs, every bit as heady as the smoke in Oberyn Martell's parlor. His tongue slipped past the barrier of her teeth and she heard herself whimper as heat flashed through her, searing the end of every nerve.

Mr. Lannister tensed against her, his strong form tight-wound as a spring, and then he eased away, releasing Brienne by stages: first his mouth, then his body, and finally his arms, dragging his hand down from neck to wrist before dropping it entirely and stepping back.

"That'll be a fine memory," he said, his voice pure gravel before he cleared it, averting his eyes. "I thank you for it."

"You're welcome," she said automatically, then felt stupid, but his beautiful mouth quirked in a faint curve.

"How are you leaving Sunspear? And when?"

"By ship, and ten o'clock tomorrow morning," replied Brienne, feeling the stirrings of alarm. "You don't mean to see me off, do you?"

"I surely do." Mr. Lannister cocked his head to the side, inquisitive, like a great showy golden bird. "Would that be bad?"

_It would be horrible. _Brienne had a feeling one of them would cause a scene, either she with weeping stupidly or he deciding to kiss her like that again. She was no expert on the topic of kissing, but she was fairly certain what he had given her was no chaste buss, appropriate for public viewing. No, she was positive that had been the sort of kiss best reserved for husbands and wives to share in the privacy of their own bedrooms, and which led to all sorts of other activities usually resulting in a happy event some nine months later.

"Just… just not necessary," she said at last, hoarsely. "No need for you to be up so early, you're still convalescing and are to rest as much as possible, I'm sure."

His mouth twisted on one side in displeasure. "I'm not an invalid," he said reproachfully. "I'm always up at dawn, no matter how bad I've been shot."

She blinked. "You've been shot before?"

He laughed. "Of course I have! Been doing this twelve years. My hand was the last part I _hadn't _been shot in." He glanced ruefully down at the bandage-wrapped limb. "Everyone's luck has to run out sometime, I guess. I'm just glad it happened later rather than sooner."

But there were lines of strain around his eyes, and Brienne didn't believe him for a moment; he was worried about his recovery, and in pain, besides. Concern filled her, along with a powerful impulse to mother him.

"The maester gave you those powders, didn't he?" she asked, thinking about what care he had taken of his wound.

He nodded reluctantly. "They taste terrible."

His face was so pouty she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. "Ask the hotel restaurant for some honey," she advised, "to sweeten it up. But you need to take them, Mr. Lannister. You won't heal if you don't rest properly."

He grimaced but nodded. "I will take them— one now, and one at bed, and one in the morning— _if _you let me see you off in the morning."

Brienne was about to comment, again, on his kindness… until he continued.

"Only way I can be sure you actually go is if I watch it with my own eyes; I half believe you'll nip away, instead, and I'll read in the paper about your grisly murder the next day."

His tone was light, teasing, but his expression was serious, as if he actually worried about that unlikely thing occurring.

"Fine," she huffed, "_if _you have a nap this afternoon. Goodness knows, I'll be having one the moment you leave. It's been an exhausting day for both of us. And I think I'm still a bit drunk."

"I suppose a nap could be arranged," he drawled, a grin lurking at the corners of his mouth. "_If _you agree to have dinner with me tonight."

It was on the tip of her tongue to refuse; more time with Mr. Lannister meant more attachment forming, and she already knew she would miss him when she was gone, despite his harsh words and shocking liberties.

_Maybe __because of __those shocking liberties_, she thought, with a wistful remembrance of his mouth on hers.

But… why deprive herself of some little scrap of pleasure? The handsomest man in Westeros— possibly all of Planetos— wanted to dine with her. Who was she to refuse him, and herself?

"All right," she therefore said, ducking her head, feeling unaccountably shy. "But you promise to go lay down right away?"

"Yes, yes, I promise." His exasperation was only partially feigned, she could tell. "All this nagging, woman, and we're not even married."

"Then imagine how awful actually marrying me would be," she said tartly as she showed him to the door.

"Yes, awful," he agreed, stepping out into the corridor, but there was something about his tone that said he meant just the opposite.

They stood there, at the threshold of her room, merely looking at each other. Brienne noticed the tiny lines that fanned out from his eyes, studied the oddness of the bridge of his nose— perhaps she could get him to reveal how he'd broken it so badly— and finally, his lips, unable to keep from recalling their kisses. Heat swept over her from head to toe and scalded her face in a fierce blush.

His mouth curled in a faint grin, and Brienne's gaze flew up to meet his, but where she expected mocking at her expense she found just a blaze of intensity, though she was hard-placed to decide what it was: anger, amusement… desire? He was staring at her just as he had done in the moments before he'd kissed her at Oberyn Martell's castle.

Yearning for another kiss welled up in her, a wave of longing that almost made her gasp at the force of it, and she clenched her thighs against the rush of arousal between them. She knew, now, what it was he made her feel, and was torn between embarrassment and a peculiar sense of… womanliness, for was this not what people had been created to do? Couple with each other in order to reproduce?

For the first time in her life, Brienne felt part of a fellowship that she had never thought to be a member of. She, too, felt desire; she, too, wanted to give herself to someone. For the first time in her life, she considered that perhaps her old, discarded dream of a husband and a child— perhaps more than one?— could be within her grasp.

Not with Jaime Lannister, of course. There was no way a woman like Brienne would be enough for him. He was accustomed to beauty and excitement, and those she had in sparse supply. He might be intrigued enough by her to indulge in a little diversion at her expense, and she had no doubt that if she gave him an inch he'd take a mile.

But if a man like him could want her, even if for just a little while… why, then, might she not dream that a lesser man, a plainer and quieter man, could want to build a life with her? Mr. Lannister had given her quite a gift, his attentions bolstering her confidence in a way little else might have done.

"So we've declared a truce, then," she said softly, almost a whisper.

"Seems that way, yes," he replied, just as soft.

"No more rudeness?"

His grin was there and gone in a flash. "Can't promise _that_," he said, "but I can try."

_Hopeless. The man is hopeless. _Brienne compressed her lips to keep from smiling at him and said, very sternly, "Go to your room and rest."

"I'll come for you at seven o'clock," he said.

_I came for you_, Brienne heard again, the words that had almost stopped her heart back at Mr. Martell's. She _had _to stop attaching meaning to the things he said. Swallowing past the sudden lump in her throat, she nodded. "At seven."

One more leisurely perusal of her unfortunate features, and Mr. Lannister sauntered away, heading back toward the big central staircase, Brienne watching the entire time because the width of his shoulders and the way his golden hair gleamed were shamefully entrancing. The flight to the fourth floor, where his room was, wound in a lazy spiral and she hastened to duck back into her room and shut the door before he completed a revolution and saw her standing there, gawking at him like a lovesick puppy.

_Well, then. _She closed the door of her heart, as well, securing it behind a stout lock and secreting the key in the deepest reaches of her mind. That had been a most wonderful interlude, but that was all it had been: an interlude. She had Evenfall Hall to run and Sansa's well-intentioned meddling to evade, and he had the deserts of Dorne to search for outlaws, and more bullets to dodge. Whatever allure she might have for him— whatever peculiar novelty she might present— would not linger past this snippet of stolen time.

Brienne crossed the room and nudged back the ponderous drapes, flinging up the window sash before she began the process of freeing herself from the confines of her jacket and blouse and skirt and the dratted, unneeded corset. Desperate for some fresh air on her sweat-damp skin, wearing nothing but her chemise, she lay on the bed and sighed in relief at the sensation of the cool sheets and light breeze.

Against all expectation, she fell asleep almost immediately.


	10. Chapter 10

Despite feeling alert— wakeful, even— Jaime was asleep the moment his head hit the pillow, and glad he'd set the alarm clock for two hours hence, or he'd have kept sleeping all through the night, he suspected. It was the pain powder; it made him drowsy, but at least the honey Brienne– for he now had trouble thinking of her as Miss Duncan any longer– had suggested made it taste less terrible.

Once awake, he washed his face and changed to a fresh shirt. He buffed up his boots as best as he could with one hand until the scuffed brown leather gleamed dully. They were old and in need of replacing, something he'd been putting off until he landed a big bounty, but now that he had all those dragons from Brienne, maybe now…?

A sensation of distaste arose in his belly, and he rejected the idea. She'd given him far too much money, feeling guilt for something that wasn't her fault, and it didn't sit right with him, using it when he hadn't earned and didn't deserve it. A man had his pride, and Jaime more than his fair share of it. No, he'd only use the bare minimum of it, and when he was recovered, send her the balance in a check.

The tightness in his belly continued, but shifted to a different cause as he left his room and headed for Brienne's, one floor down. She was intriguing, a careful balance of strength and softness with a silver thread of decency and a gold one of innocence running through the fabric making her up. He hadn't realized until he'd kissed her how starved he was for the company of someone with the kind of moral code he could respect and feel good about, instead of as if he needed to scrub away the taint of corruption.

Ros and the saloon girls were nice, but they'd sell him out in a heartbeat, as would all the other bounty hunters, even those with whom he got along well. Bronn he counted as almost a friend, and yet Jaime had no doubt that if a sack of dragons or parcel of good range land were in the offing, Bronn would sell him up the river in a heartbeat.

Brienne, on the other hand, had not only _not _left him to twist in the wind, after his injury, but had inconvenienced herself and spent her own money to help him. He could count on one finger the number of people who would do that for him: his brother, Tyrion, and even then… after all these years, and the hard words between them when Jaime had left Casterly Rock… well, he wasn't absolutely positive he could rely on Tyrion. Not anymore.

She answered promptly in response to the three sharp raps he delivered to the door, and he had to smile. Gone was the pretense at a ladylike appearance; before him stood a woman far more comfortable with herself and her clothing. The navy suit from earlier had been replaced by a split skirt in dark gray, man's style shirt in light blue, and boots almost as disreputable-looking as his own. Her hair, instead of the elaborately pinned style of before, had given way to a single long flaxen braid falling over her shoulder, and Jaime had the nigh-irresistible urge to tug on it.

When his roaming gaze finally ascended to her face once more, it was to find an expression of challenge there, as if she were daring him to comment, but all he did was take her hand and lift it to his lips for a kiss of greeting, much like when they'd met for the first time at Miz Uller's boarding house.

Except this time, it wasn't to tease or goad her. This time, it was to express his appreciation for her, to signal his respect and interest, and if the flush that crept up her throat was any indication, she understood the distinction.

"Miss Brienne," he said, daring to use her first name instead of the last, "you look very pretty."

Her mouth flattened in skepticism and she averted her eyes as she stepped from her room and shut the door, but she said nothing to contradict him. He knew why, could remember quite clearly his opinion of her looks from the day before. He'd been having quite a bit of trouble applying the word 'ugly' to her for a while, though… definitely since waking up after being shot. He knew her now— not as well as he'd like, but better than before. Instead of ugly, she just looked like Brienne.

He tucked that hand into the crook of his elbow as they walked down the corridor, having come to enjoy that quite a bit during their walk that afternoon.

"Well?" he prompted after a moment. "Aren't you going to tell me I look pretty, too?"

It startled a bark of laughter from her, as he'd intended. "I doubt you need the reminder," was her droll reply.

"Ah, but it's always nice to feel appreciated," he said with a grin. She was such a sobersides, such a quiet and stoic woman, that he felt quite proud of himself any time he managed to amuse her. If they had more time together, he'd take it as a challenge, see how often he could make her smile and laugh…

But they didn't have more time. They had just that one night, and the morning, and that was it.

Jaime's pulse leapt at the implication; a lot could happen over the course of a night, as he had seen for himself since he was fourteen and far too easily led by his cock for prudence. It was a trait he was sad to admit had continued well into his thirties and only conquered a few years earlier.

It had taken a scare of having caught the Lysene pox to make him reconsider his habits and indulgences: he'd pissed blood, gaped down in horror, and then sprinted to the nearest maester. To his relief, it had been a consequence of the nasty punch to the kidneys he'd taken the day before, not the sign of something more ominous. But for that terrifying hour before the maester diagnosed the problem, he'd made more than one oath to himself about changing his ways, and he meant to keep every one of them.

To wit: Brienne Duncan was a good woman. Respectable. And he was going to respect her if it killed him. He was not going to seduce her, to risk getting a baby on her and sending her home in shame. No child of his was going to be a Hill, or a Flowers or a Stone or whatever was the name of bastards where she lived.

"Where are you from?" he asked as they reached the hotel's restaurant.

She flashed him a look of, if he were not mistaken, alarm. She was probably leery of revealing to a stranger— a bounty hunter, only one step up from the outlaws they captured— where she made her home, and he couldn't blame her, but at the same time could not deny the flash of anger he felt. Pointless anger, it was, because hadn't he made the choice of occupation freely? But his Lannister pride was intact even after all those years, it would seem, and balked at being thought beneath someone.

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to," he said as they took their seats. "I shouldn't have asked."

"No, it's— it's fine," she hurried to say. "I'm from the Stormlands."

There was no guile in her extraordinary eyes, so he knew she was telling him the truth, just a vague one. It was no matter; she'd be gone in the morning and it wouldn't matter where she lived.

"I'm from the Westerlands," he offered by way of conversation.

"Yes, I know," she said dryly. "Everyone who's ever read that two-stag novel about you knows how you turned your back on a life of wealth and privilege to ride the range, apprehending criminals."

Jaime grimaced. "I'm sorry I ever agreed to let that thing get published," he groused. "It's about 10% truth and 90% pure horse shit."

"We all have a certain amount of horse shit to our reputations," she murmured in response, her mouth curved in amusement as she perused her menu, and he delighted in getting her to join him in banter.

She ordered the chicken, he the fish, and they spent a leisurely two hours eating and talking and even laughing, thanks in great part to Jaime's efforts to tease her. They finally removed themselves from the restaurant when their waiter began asking them not-so-subtle questions about how their meal had been and if he should bring them their check.

Jaime insisted on paying, enjoying how she flushed at the implication that this had been some sort of courting overture. He wished he had more time for more of the same.

At the top of the second flight of stairs, when he realized that Brienne was about to turn down the corridor to her room, he wracked his brain for an excuse to extend their time together and hit upon something that was both convenience and necessity.

"Would you help me change my bandage?" he blurted at last. Jaime could change the bandage himself— had done it without assistance that morning before running for the train— but it would be easier and neater if she played maester.

"Of course," she said, as he'd known she would, and so he guided her to his room on the fourth floor.

Once inside, he got out the spare strips of linen and small tin of salve and little flat wooden slats Maester Yandel had forced upon him to immobilize his hand, trying to juggle the lot with just the one, and caught her gazing around at his things, one hand outstretched for the rumpled jacket he'd discarded on a chair. Realized he was watching, she snatched her hand back.

"I just… wanted to…" she said, clearly embarrassed. "… fold it," she finished in a mumble. "I like when things are in order."

"Another reason it's good we're not getting married," he replied with forced cheer, "because I like when things are _not _in order."

"I'd have to kill you, eventually," Brienne said. "Strangle you with your own dirty laundry, I'm sure."

"Such an ignoble way to go," Jaime said lightly as he sat at the foot of the bed, then chuckled at her expression of surprise. "I know fancy words. I went to university, you know."

"Did you?" Her face was alight with curiosity as she perched beside him. She took his hand into her lap and began unwinding the bandages. "I wanted to go, but…"

Her sigh was resigned. He knew why she hadn't gone; women simply didn't, expected to be too busy marrying and keeping house. Higher education was deemed an unnecessary expense and waste of prime childbearing years.

"What would you have studied?" Jaime asked.

She was occupied with smearing salve from the tin onto the neat puncture hole going through-and-through the triangle of flesh between forefinger and thumb and took a moment to answer.

"History," she said at last. "Or literature. Or both. Everything." She flashed him a shy, bashful smile before returning her gaze to her work. "I like to learn."

She was impossibly appealing. Jaime tucked his left hand under his thigh to keep from reaching out and touching her somehow: winding a loose strand of hair behind her little pink ear, trailing a fingertip over the pale arch of an eyebrow, brushing his thumb over the deep curve of her bottom lip.

"You'd get on well with my brother," he said instead. "Tyrion loves to learn more than anyone else." He winced when she began winding new bandages around the breadth of his palm, the action painful despite the exquisite care she was taking. "And drink wine. Drinking and knowing things: that's what he does."

She grinned down at his hand. "He sounds like a character."

"He is," Jaime agreed. "We're all characters, we Lannisters."

His tone was flat, and she glanced up again, eyes searching for some clue to his mood.

"That… doesn't sound too good," she said hesitantly. Her careful fingers placed the flat squares of wood on either side of his wound, then began wrapping more bandages around to hold them in place.

"We're full of potential," he said quietly. "We're born with every advantage. We could change the world, if we set our mind to it. We just… don't. We're petty and selfish, power-hungry and covetous." He leaned forward and tapped the end of her crooked nose with his finger. "You, my dear, have dodged an even worse bullet than I caught, by not marrying me."

Brienne tied the end of the bandage in a small, tidy knot. "Hm," she said noncommittally, sitting back and surveying him with her calm blue gaze. "You know, I'm not convinced of that."

And _oh_, how that made his stomach tighten, in arousal and frustration and affection. This woman was too sweet to be believed, would be the death of both of them.

All evening, that enraged voice in his head had been shrieking in protest of how she seemed so effortless in controlling him, how since the moment of meeting he'd been leaping do things for her that put him at risk. Spending this time with her was more of the same, except instead of physical danger, there was something even more terrifying coming into play, and it had his heart and mind squalling in apprehension and protest.

"I'll walk you to your room," he told her abruptly. He couldn't think straight when he was near her. She put him in mind of things he'd already decided against, many years ago. It had been difficult putting aside any such dreams back then; now, it was nearly unbearable.

"Alright," she said mildly, but her expression was curious.

At her door, he lingered, reluctant and eager to part from her at the same time. "So your ship leaves at ten."

She nodded wordlessly.

"I'll come for you at eight; we can have breakfast, then leave for the docks at nine."

She nodded again.

"Sleep well."

"You as well."

The door shut between them. He walked away.

Back in his room, he stripped off and fell into bed, staring at the ceiling and calling himself ten kinds of a fool. Somewhere along the way, he'd stopped hating her for being more temptation than he could resist, and started hating himself for his weakness. It had been easier, to hate her; her, he could distance himself from. There was no escaping himself.

He rolled over and punched his pillow, then cursed a blue streak when pain shot up his arm; he'd used his right hand, forgetting about his injury for the hundredth time that day.

He was an idiot, and deserved what he got.

.

* * *

.

Brienne had expected, upon shutting the door behind Jaime— for he was Jaime to her now, at least in her thoughts— that she wouldn't get a wink of sleep. She felt alert in the extreme, fidgety and overheated. And that tingling between her legs simply would not go away.

What a wonderful evening it had been! Oh, she'd spent many others like it, lingering over a meal as long as possible to enjoy the company; her memories of days spent at Winterfell and Highreach shone brightly, the sound of laughter seeming to echo through the years. But never, not one time, had one of those delightful evenings been just her and a beau, and how she thrilled to even think of the word 'beau' in conjunction with herself.

Because though some believed her slow, the truth was that Brienne was just thorough, and careful, not speaking or acting before she was convinced of the wisdom of it. She was sharp as a tack, and she didn't like lying, especially not to herself. And it would be a lie if she claimed Jaime were not interested in her as a man would be interested in a woman.

It was hard to believe, almost incomprehensible, but… yes. Even with her lack of experience in the ways and means of the male gender, she knew that men could not lie about some things. Jaime was not lying about his interest in her, though she remained baffled as to why. And unless he were a _very _fine actor indeed, he was not dissembling about liking her.

Brienne undressed for bed, but even the loss of the restriction and coverage of the fabric did not ease the sense of tension she felt, as if she were a long spring coiled up tight. She peeled back the bed linens and laid down but did not cover herself with them, laying there with her thoughts all muddled as she stared out into the darkness.

One hand found its way to her breast without conscious direction, cupping and then rubbing before finding the nipple and rolling it between her fingertips, tugging lightly, as Jaime had done at the Martells'. A bolt of sensation zinged down the full length of her body and she drew in a shuddery breath.

A few times Brienne had tried to find her own pleasure, but it had never been sustainable and she'd become bored with the effort. Now, with the taste of Jaime in her memory, the feel of his skin on her hands and the scent of him in her nose, she anticipated no such problems.

Her other hand rucked up her shift, then delved into her small clothes, and found that the negligible dampness she'd had on other occasions had become a veritable monsoon on the present one. Her fingers slid easily, helping her to locate and finesse exactly what she needed, and before long she gasped his name— _Jaime, Jaime _— as she writhed on the bed, overcome.

Thirty seconds later, she was asleep, a tiny smile on her face.

When Brienne awoke the next morning, she couldn't keep from blushing at the thought of what she'd done, and who she'd thought of while doing it. She went about her toilette and packing while her face got redder and redder, until she knew she'd resemble a beet by the time Jaime arrived.

She splashed cold water on her face and sat for a moment to gather herself, drawing a deep breath at the thought of what was to come. With any luck, she'd manage a goodbye with Jaime that did not include tears or inappropriate scenes at the dock.

She'd decided, over the course of the previous evening, after Jaime's pleas to reconsider, not to go ahead with her plan for a temporary husband. Her episode with Mr. Martell had proven to her that she was not quite as impermeable as she had thought— it was easy to deflect insults, easier still to defend herself physically, but it was clear Brienne was woefully unable to fend off attacks of a more sensual nature.

Perhaps that was why she was so susceptible to Jaime. A more sensual man she'd never met, and when the full force of his charisma was aimed at her… well, she had no defenses against it, that was certain, nor when he looked at her so intently, touched her so skillfully, kissed her so passionately.

Yes, that must be it; years of womanhood without romantic attention, and a man of Jaime's physical appeal… of course she'd be easily wooed and won. An ugly thought reared it unwelcome head: what if easy capitulation was the reason he had aimed his considerable charms in her direction?

_But no. _A man like Jaime had no need to play such games to get a woman; every female in Westeros was surely his for the taking, and all of them prettier than Brienne. She knew she was naive, and possibly quite foolish as well, if this mad journey in pursuit of a madder plan were any indication, but she was not a bad judge of character, and whatever Jaime's reasons for his pursuit of her, they were not motivated by wickedness.

She didn't quite understand why, having been told so often of her dullness that she'd come to just accept it as obvious fact, but she was not going to argue the point. The handsomest, most exciting bounty hunter on the continent liked her, _her_, big homely Brienne Tarth. Nothing would come of it, but… nothing had to. It was enough, it was _good_, just as it was.

The knowledge of her appeal to Jaime, mysterious though it was, lightened her heart and gave her courage. She'd return to Evenfall and put the place in order for Sansa's arrival with her husband and Brienne's potential suitor. She'd welcome her guests and enjoy their company and not permit Sansa to lovingly bully her into accepting this Tormund person. And once they were gone, she'd settle back into her life once more.

The knock at the door startled her. She leapt from her seat on the bed to her feet, hand to her thumping heart. Smoothing her suddenly-moist palms down her thighs, she went to answer it.


	11. Chapter 11

Brienne swung open the door and caught her breath; with his still-damp hair and alert expression, he was so handsome it almost pained her to look at him.

"Morning!" he said brightly. "I could eat an aurochs. I hope this place does a good breakfast."

"Yes," replied Brienne faintly, feeling dazed. "Let me just get my valise."

Case firmly in hand, one last inspection of the room to be sure she hadn't left anything behind, she let him tuck her hand in his elbow as he seemed to like and lead her toward the stairs.

"You're… very cheerful," she commented as they descended to the first floor. "Have you been drinking already?"

His laughter rang out across the lobby, drawing every eye to their entrance. He didn't even seem to notice, but she was realizing that he drew attention everywhere he went and after a lifetime of it, he likely didn't even notice anymore. She was not used to it, however, and found herself shrinking into his side at the clear puzzlement and derision on the faces of those who were obviously wondering what a man like him was doing with a woman like her. If they could even tell she was a woman in the first place…

"No," he said. "I'm just feeling better. Less worried about losing use of my hand, too." He flexed the limb in question, just a little and he set his jaw against the pain, Brienne could tell, but his fingers curled obediently and he seemed pleased.

"I'm glad," she replied. "I have been worried about it."

He looked up at her, his gaze warm, and he offered her another little smile. "Let's leave your bag at the desk while we eat."

She deposited her valise with the clerk and permitted Jaime to steer her into the restaurant, where he proceeded to order a quantity of food that even she would be hard-pressed to put away, and she was considered by most to be a very good eater, given her size and build.

"Do you always eat like this?" she asked, trying to think back to last night's dinner— it hadn't seemed excessive, at the time, but she'd been so charmed and distracted by him that she could barely remember what _she_ had had for dinner.

"I'm recuperating," he said by way of excuse, then, "In the mornings, yes. I do a series of exercises, to stay strong, when I wake up and when I'm done, I'm starving."

The waiter approached with a tray of food. He placed Brienne's coddled eggs and toast before her, then began unburdening himself of the rest in front of Jaime: a stack of flapjacks, fried potatoes, half a dozen scrambled eggs, and a soup bowl brimming with porridge. As she watched, eating her meal and sipping her juice, he demolished the lot and washed it down with coffee the approximate temperature of molten steel.

"You look amazed," he commented when he was done, placing his empty cup back on its saucer with a clink. "Even a bit concerned."

"I'm wondering if I left you enough money," murmured Brienne. "If this is how you eat, you'll go through it in a week."

His expression of amusement faded. "About that," he said. "I… I do need the money, until I can shoot with any amount of accuracy again." He was clearly reluctant to admit it; the words seemed dragged out of him. "But when I'm working once more, I'm giving it all back to you."

"No," she said immediately. "Absolutely not. It wasn't a loan, it was for—"

"If you say it was for services rendered, I'm going to—"

He stopped abruptly, obviously not wanting to declare his intention to strike a woman, even in jest. That irked her more than any threat might; how dare he treat her like some soft little thing who couldn't take a punch?

"To what?" she challenged, leaning toward him, ruing the obstacle of the table between them. "Do you think I wouldn't win any fight you picked?"

Eyes narrow, he stared at her a long moment. Then he laughed, loudly again, once more drawing the attention of everyone in proximity.

"By the gods, I think you could," he said at last. "Though I'd make you work for it." He studied her carefully. "I bet you're good at arm-wrestling."

She was unable to hold back a tiny but smug grin. "Town champion six years running."

He laughed again. "I wish we were able to have a bout. It would be a clash of titans, for certain." He gave a 'come hither' wave to the waiter, who'd been discreetly loitering nearby in hopes of delivering their check.

Before Brienne could even motion toward her wallet, Jaime had handed the waiter some cash and was rounding the table to pull out her chair.

"It's after nine," he told her.

She forgot to be irritated by his courtly manners, shooting to her feet, wide-eyed. "That late already?"

Almost dashing to the front desk, she retrieved her valise and settled her bill, offering the clerk a smile, but he had eyes only for Jaime, who was pretending not to notice as he gazed around the lobby. Brienne didn't blame the clerk one bit; the man was mesmerizing.

"Let's go," she said as she turned back to him.

"We'll have to rush to make it to the dock," Jaime said, and put out his hand, already headed for the hotel's entrance.

With a smile she couldn't repress, Brienne took it, letting him pull her along.

The hack they flagged down sprung the horse but it still took longer than Brienne would have liked. They were pressed far too close together, inside the vehicle, and while it was shady the heat still shimmered in the air. Jaime was snug all along her side, their shoulders warring for the limited space available. The scent of him, something like dried grasses, filled her nose and the familiar yearning rose within her yet again, the memory of their kisses relentless.

"So," she began lamely after riding a while, every bit as awkward-feeling as she'd expected.

"So," he repeated, his voice teasing, but then he sobered. "You promise you're going right home, no stops to talk anyone else into marrying you?"

She huffed out a sigh. "Yes, Mr. Lannister, I promise. I have seen the error of my ways and will scurry home as ordered." His narrowed eyes made her feel reckless, made her want to provoke a reaction from him. "Maybe I'll just marry this Tormund person Sansa is bringing for me. It'll save a lot of trouble. How many women can say they had a husband delivered right to their door?"

He huffed at her. "You'd settle for some bland arrangement? Even after—"

Jaime cut himself off, but not before she caught his meaning: would she settle for some bland arrangement, after having experienced this all-too-brief interlude of passion with him? Now that she knew how it could be between a man and a woman?

_What choice do I have?_

"Most people settle for bland arrangements," Brienne said after a moment of gathering her thoughts. "Anything else is an exception, not the rule."

"You deserve the exception." His eyes were steady on her, bright with conviction. His insistence perversely grated on Brienne.

"With my looks, I'll be lucky to get the rule," she snapped. "And even that is unlikely."

Jaime took her hand and ducked his head. "Don't be cross."

His voice pitched low, seductive, and he looked up at her from beneath golden lashes. She had the feeling he'd used the expression to get himself out scrapes since he was boy. She'd like to have said she was immune, but if the way her lungs felt like they were melting into her stomach were any indication, she was not. She almost preferred him when he was being hostile and rude; it was easier to control her reactions to him. He was nigh-irresistible when being awful; when he was sweet and charming, she had to fight a powerful impulse to fling herself at him.

_Oh, why does he have to be so beautiful?_ she wondered in despair.

With a deep breath, she fell back on her ironclad resolve and figurative spine of steel. "Stop that at once," she told him sternly, tugging at her hand, but it only made him grin and hold on to her harder.

The air sweetened as they approached the dock, the freshness of brine on the wind conquering even the pong of low tide, and Brienne inhaled deeply at the familiar, beloved smell. She hated spending time away from a shore; it made her feel enclosed, as if there were nothing to breathe. Despite this bittersweet parting, she realized she was eager to return to Evenfall Hall, despite knowing what faced her soon after her arrival.

The hack shuddered to a halt, and Jaime sprang out with what Brienne was learning was his customary speed and agility, reaching out a hand to help her out. She didn't need the assistance, but… his hand was warm and strong, calloused from horse reins and gun triggers, the knuckles scarred from a decade of bar brawls and scuffles with bounties.

She couldn't repress a little shiver of excitement. This man might seem mild-mannered, but beneath the surface, he was a hunter and a killer. There was possibly something wrong with Brienne, because instead of repelling her, it only made him more appealing to her. He could be violent, but chose not to be. He was dangerous only when he wanted to be, and that leashed power— the control he exhibited— was almost wildly arousing to her.

Jaime handed payment for the ride to the driver and frowned when he turned back and found Brienne had retrieved her valise from where it had been stowed in the trunk. The hack clattered away, unnoticed, because they had begun a fight for dominance; he tried to take the case from Brienne but she fought him.

"I can do it!" she insisted.

"Of course you can!" he replied, surprised. "I just wanted to do it for you."

Now her stomach was melting, too. "Oh," she muttered, and looked away while she handed him the valise and her face flamed. A massive steamship was moored alongside the teeming dock, a steady stream of passengers already making their way up the gangway while porters wrestled their luggage onto massive trolleys. The ship's three stacks, painted Stormlands yellow-and-black, were already smoking, indicating that the engines had been fired, and Brienne knew they hadn't much more time.

She tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow as they approached the ship, not needing him to coax it into position anymore; it was just what they did when they walked together, now.

"So this goes up the coast, does it?" Jaime asked, head tilted back to take in the full height of it. His brown throat— with the prominent apple and pronounced hollow revealed by his relaxed stance on neckwear— were so tempting that Brienne clenched her fists to keep from reaching for him.

She nodded. "It's one of three that travels up and down the eastern coast, Sunspear to Estermont to Tarth to Dragonstone to Gulltown, then back down again." She paused a moment to swallow the lump in her throat that always formed at the thought of her father. "My father was one of the captains."

"Of this one?" he asked, his gaze gentle on her face, as if he could tell she was troubled to speak of Selwyn Tarth.

Brienne peered at the hull, where the name was written: _Diamond Desert_. She shook her head.

"No, his was the _Sapphire Sea_." She'd lived with her father on the _Sea_ after her mother died, until her septa declared such vagabond living inappropriate for a young lady. From that point, she'd remained on Tarth, only seeing her father when the Sea made port at Evenfall, the island's largest town, or the rare occasions he'd gone on holiday and returned home.

But Selwyn had been a sailor at heart, and before he'd spent three days at the Hall, he'd become fidgety and restless and Brienne had known he was longing to have a rolling deck beneath his feet once more.

"Was?"

"He's dead." The flatness of her tone said the topic was closed, and Jaime did not press, though his expression was clearly curious.

A collision of something with Brienne's bottom had her squeaking and whipping around to investigate the cause: a porter had bumped into her with a heavily laden trolley.

"Sorry, ser. I mean ma'am!" the porter corrected hastily, a young man— boy, really— a head shorter than she. He made to continue his trek toward where the luggage was being heaved into the ship's hold when he spotted the case in Jaime's hand. "You'd better get onboard while the getting's good, ma'am, ser. This is the last to be loaded, and then we're underway."

He put out his hand for the valise but Brienne demurred. "Thank you, though."

He nodded at her and with a grunt of effort gave the mounded trolley a shove. Groaning in protest, it grudgingly began to roll.

"This is it, then," said Jaime. He handed over her case, then used his newly free hand to take hers, squeezing it lightly. "Be careful, will you?"

She nodded. "I… you be careful, too," Brienne told him, then nervously licked her lips before decided to be brave and say, "If anything happened to you… I would grieve, too."

Jaime's eyes were soft, soft, soft as he gazed at her. His lips parted, as if he were about to speak, but he only swallowed, glancing down for a moment. It composed him, because when he looked back up at Brienne, his usual teasing smile was back.

"Fair warning," he said. "I'm going to kiss the hell out of you in about three seconds, so if you don't want me to, you'd better step away."

But Brienne wasn't feeling especially prohibitive at that moment, despite the venue and the crowd. She would not pass up her last chance to kiss Jaime Fookin' Lannister, as Sheriff Bronn had called him. So she remained right where she was, enjoying the surprise on his face, and then the grin when he realized its implication.

"Well, you asked for it," he said, and took her in his arms, but instead of meshing their mouths as expected, he just looked at her for a moment with a tiny smile.

_Then_ he kissed her, and it was everything a woman could want: deep, masterful, intimate, sweet, thorough. Jaime's good hand cupped her cheek, the other pressing between her shoulder blades to urge her chest against his. Brienne dropped the valise to the ground so she could wind both arms around him, relishing the heat of him seeping through his clothing to her palms.

Only when someone whistled, and a scandalized gasp sounded somewhere in the vicinity, did they pull away from each other— to a smattering of applause. Brienne's face went red-hot but Jaime just beamed at their sparse audience and swept them all a deep, magnificent bow while she pinched the bridge of her nose.

When he straightened, the humor drained from his face, just as all her frustration with his ways dissolved, and all that was left was reluctance. Brienne felt her chin trembling, as it always did when she was trying to keep her face stoic instead of revealing the emotion she felt. Her gaze roamed over his face, trying to memorize his features, and the way he was staring back made her think that perhaps he was doing the same to her.

A scrape of metal dragged their attention from each other; the gangway had begun to be dragged in. Brienne's eyes flew wide.

"Go!" said Jaime, giving her a little push when she just stood there, unable to move away from him. "Go, now!"

She snatched up her case, and began to run for the gangway, stumbling a little at first before getting her feet properly under her, hand on her head to keep her hat from flying off. When she reached her destination, the midshipman directing the cast-off shot her a sour look but halted the withdrawal of the gangway so she could race up it to the ship.

She was acutely embarrassed for delaying everyone but no one seemed to be paying her any mind, excited as they were to embark. She fought her way— politely— through the throng until she found a rare vacant spot at the dockside railing, hoping to be able to spot Jaime one last time before he climbed into another hack or turned to walk down the street.

Brienne sucked in a surprised breath to find him standing right where she'd left him, eyes keen as he searched the crowd seething around her. She knew the moment he spotted her, because he grinned, and she couldn't keep a reflexive smile off her own face in response.

Was he truly going to stand there until they embarked? Perhaps she should go inside, to her stateroom or the lounge where some of the passengers were already taking advantage of the ship's liberal provision of alcohol. But…

She suppressed a sigh and stayed right where she was, gaze fixed across the narrow slice of water between ship and dock to the man so handsome that there was a positive buzz rising around her from her fellow female passengers.

"Goodness, do you see that gentlemen just there? Look at how he's staring this way! He must be very reluctant to part from his lady." The woman seemed very impressed with Jaime's supposed devotion.

"If he's going to miss her so much, why not just come with her?" replied a lazy male voice.

"I bet they're star-crossed lovers," sighed the woman. Brienne glanced over, curious, and saw she was a pretty girl, beautifully dressed, cheeks pinkened by the briskness of the sea air and starry-eyed at the idea of a couple pining for each other. "Life's circumstances keeping them apart… but their love shall persevere…"

The man snorted and straightened from his slouch against the railing, taking her hand and tucking it into the crook of his arm in a manner both solicitous and possessive. As they began to saunter off, his response drifted back to Brienne. "That sort of nonsense doesn't really happen, Ysilla."

"It did for us," Ysilla said archly, her eyes bright as she gazed up at him.

Soon Brienne couldn't hear them past the noise of everything else clamoring around them, but she watched, a smile on her lips, until they turned a corner and were out of sight.

_Star-crossed lovers indeed_, she thought fondly, and wished all the best for the young couple. Turning back around, she noticed another young man standing not far away, his gaze bold as he raked it over her. He swept one last dismissive glance at her and turned away just as a familiar face presented itself to Brienne in the form of Captain Davos Seaworth, one of her father's oldest friends.

"Brienne Tarth, as I live and breathe!" Captain Seaworth exclaimed.

"Hello, Uncle Davos," she replied warmly, submitting to his embrace and kiss even as she rued with humor his need to go up on tiptoes to reach her cheek. "You've got this run?"

He nodded. "I've cut back to just one a week, now that the grandchildren have begun arriving. They need to know their grandpapa, not just stories about him."

She forced a smile as memories of her father barraged her once again. "How nice, I'm sure they'll love having you close."

"I don't have time to talk right now— must get underway— but tonight, join me for supper?"

Brienne agreed, received a warm press of the hands and another kiss to the cheek, and Captain Seaworth was gone in a whirl of blue wool uniform and gold braid. Turning back to the dock, she found Jaime still there, watching with a crooked smile. He lifted an eyebrow in inquiry, clearly wondering about the captain. She could only smile; no way to explain to him from that distance.

"Did I hear 'Tarth'?" asked a masculine voice from behind her, and Brienne spun to find the man from just before, who'd looked at her with such curiosity, standing there. This time, his expression was more neutral, almost solicitous.

"Yes?" she replied, more a question of his intent than confirmation.

"Like the island?" he pressed.

She sighed. Not the first time she'd been quizzed on the unusual nature of her name. "Yes, like the island," she confirmed.

"Well!" he exclaimed, seeming just a bit too enthusiastic about it. "It's not everyday you meet someone with their own island."

"It's not _my_ island," she corrected hastily, looking around in hopes no one had overheard, but he'd been loud and his voice had carried. A good half-dozen people around them had stopped to stare, and Brienne barely refrained from rolling her eyes. "It hasn't been the family's for three hundred years. Now we just have the castle."

An impoverished ancestor had been forced to sell parcels of land until all that remained was Evenfall Hall, to Brienne's relief. She didn't want to even think about the amount of work it would have taken to govern the entire island; she struggled enough with just the Hall and its estate.

"_Just_ the castle!" the man hooted, eyes dancing with mirth as well as avarice.

"Yes," she muttered unhappily, eyes downcast. She should have gone directly to her stateroom, instead of lingering on the deck to stare moonily at Jaime as long as possible. A jerk of the deck beneath her feet, and she knew her chance was over, in any case: they were underway.

Turning from the persistent man, she found Jaime standing, watching, a frown creasing his brow. If she didn't know better, she'd have thought him… jealous?

_Even if you truly wanted me, you'd have nothing to worry about_, she thought, a trifle hysterically. _No one else wants me, either._

Beside her, the young man was talking, but Brienne paid no mind to him or anything else while the ship hove from the shore, her attention reserved for Jaime. She raised a hand in farewell once they were far enough apart that she could no longer discern the sharp-cut features that made him so handsome. He raised his bandaged hand back at her, and then the ship began its ponderous turn toward the open sea, at last breaking the line of sight between its passengers and the dock.

_And that's that_, she thought, steadfastly ignoring the pang of loss she felt. She hoped his hand healed well and fast, she hoped he remained safe for a long while, she hoped—

"Lady Tarth?" the man asked, an edge to his voice that told her he'd been trying to gain her attention for a while.

Brienne took a speedy personal inventory; though her eyes burned with tears, she had not let any of them fall. Blinking rapidly, she turned to face him and forced a smile to her lips. "Just Miss Tarth, please. Yes?"

"I introduced myself." Faintly accusing, as if he felt she should have been more appreciative of his efforts. "Twice."

"I'm sorry." Her instinct to apologize was immediate, though she didn't feel too sorry at all. But manners had been drilled into her without mercy in her formative years. Inwardly sighing, she reached out a hand to shake. "Once more?"

Looking mollified, he took her hand but instead of giving it a mere shake, he lifted it for a kiss.

After Jaime's kiss there two days earlier, the idea of having another man's lips on the same skin was repellent. She turned her hand in his grasp to be able to grip it properly and gave it a firm pump before releasing him, pretending to smooth her split skirt so she could wipe off the dampness left by his clammy palm.

He looked a little disgruntled, but forced a pleasant smile as he repeated his name. "Hyle Hunt."


	12. Chapter 12

Brienne managed to extricate herself from Hyle Hunt's attentions with some difficulty, near-fleeing to her stateroom to gather her untidy thoughts. Such a very, very, very strange few days she'd passed, and not a one of them productive. All she'd done was waste time and money and effort, and with the haze of panic cleared away, she saw how ludicrous and futile her quest had always been.

Pay a man to be her husband for a month! Had she actually thought it would work? Sansa was no fool, she'd have seen through it in mere seconds. It had been pride, nothing more, that drove her to desperation, and the notion that Brienne still had some pride left in her after a lifetime of shoddy treatment because of her looks… well, she'd have thought it beaten out of her years ago, except it appeared that it was still alive and kicking and making her do ridiculous things.

Brienne sat in the chair by the porthole and watched the Dornish peninsula pass by. They'd round the Broken Arm within five hours, and make port at Greenstone, on Estermont, by five more after that, expelling some passengers and taking on others. Then a slow, careful path around Cape Wrath and through Shipbreaker Bay until reaching Evenfall the next morning. It was a journey Brienne had made a hundred times, and ordinarily the sameness of it would comfort her.

Instead, she was consumed with thoughts of Jaime. What would he do next? Return to the hotel for his things, certainly, and perhaps have some lunch— though how he'd manage more food after that breakfast, she didn't know— then be back on the train bound for Ghost Hill. He'd arrive after dark, probably head to the saloon… the memory of one of the fancy ladies, her cat-with-the-cream smirk when she'd asked them about Jaime, appeared in her mind's eye and Brienne realized with her newfound experience of passion that the woman hadn't just been contemplating Jaime as a lover. She'd been remembering it, and fondly, if that smirk were any indication.

Brienne's stomach turned sour in an instant. She tried to tell herself it was distaste at the idea of a man of her acquaintance availing himself of a prostitute, but knew the truth of it: jealousy, pure and simple. Some part of her considered Jaime _hers_ and she didn't want another woman touching him, kissing him, having relations with him. His hot eyes, his soft lips, the little humming sounds of arousal he made… those, too, belonged to Brienne. For a moment, she felt capable of actual violence in defense of her—

Her what, exactly? Jaime was not her husband, nor her betrothed; not even a beau who'd come calling on her. He was nothing to her, nor she anything to him. They'd never have met had she not gone off on her wild hare to Dorne. They had no duties to each other, owed each other nothing. And yet Brienne could still feel the scorching trail of his fingertips on her skin, over her face and down her throat, and the velvet rasp of his tongue against hers.

_Enough_. There was no point to tormenting herself with an impossibility.

She glanced at the little brass clock bolted to the bedside table. It was still an hour until lunch, and ordinarily, she'd have spent it walking the deck, enjoying the sea air and the scenery, but she'd had a devil of a time escaping Mr. Hunt and did not want to chance having to endure his company again, any sooner than absolutely necessary.

She'd spotted him for a fortune hunter right away, having considerable experience with his ilk in the past. It was one of the reasons she'd given a false last name in Dorne: to keep anyone from knowing where she lived and causing problems for her, and to prevent anyone from connecting her to her ancestral seat and thinking to avail themselves of her home and fortune, if only they could bamboozle her into believing they'd been seized by a grand and sudden passion for her.

If only she'd honed that instinct a few years sooner. Her life would have seen far less humiliation and heartache.

_Jaime_ _didn't want your estate_, whispered an ornery and unwelcome voice from somewhere within her. Her heart, she suspected. She steadfastly ignored it to fetch a two-stag novel— _not_ one about bounty hunters— from her valise, opening it to the bookmark and trying to lose herself in the frankly rather silly tale.

But distraction was not to be hers; she had scarcely turned the first page when there came a knock at her door.

"Lady Tarth?" called a voice from outside. _Hyle Hunt._ "_Miss_ Tarth, rather," he added belatedly. He knocked again.

Brienne sat, frozen, torn between her bone-deep aversion to rudeness and the powerful desire to avoid him. His use of her title, showing where his focus truly lay, decided her. She had no obligation to him whatsoever. She prayed his destination was not Tarth; she feared she'd never be shot of him if it were.

He knocked and said her name once more, then seemed to accept she was not present, for it fell silent once more. Unbidden, a scene began to play in her head, of Jaime's reaction to Mr. Hunt's tenacity, had he been present: he'd have laughed at first, because what need had she for another man when he was there? And then, if Mr. Hunt had persisted, Jaime would have strode to the door, yanked it open, and told him in no uncertain terms that Miss Tarth was unavailable to him in any capacity.

Then he'd have slammed the door in the other man's face and turned back to Brienne, the smirk on his face shifting to something mischievous, or perhaps seductive—

_No, dammit._ Brienne opened the book once more, with hands that held a bit more of a tremor than she'd have liked, and made herself concentrate on the ridiculous novel.

Jaime watched the ship depart until the dock was quite abandoned by any but the longshoremen toting and hefting their burdens. He couldn't see her any longer, and knew she could not see him, either, but still he was reluctant to go. Finally, unable to justify more delay, he left to return to the hotel. He'd check out, grab a box lunch for the train, and be back in Ghost Hill by sundown, just in time to snag an hour with Ros before she began her work for the evening. It would be good to vent a bit of the pent-up energy he'd been riding since making Brienne's acquaintance the day before. She meant nothing to him, had just been exciting and unusual and— some time with Ros was sure to put to rest any lingering fascination Brienne Duncan might have held for him.

He got his key from the clerk— bestowing a wink upon the blushing lad as he did— then loped up the stairs to collect his things from his room. In short order, he'd checked out, grabbed that lunch from the hotel's restaurant, and caught a hack to the train station. Once ensconced upon the same worn velvet seat that had borne him to Sunspear the day before, he let himself relax— just a little— and contemplated his next steps.

He had the money from that bounty he'd brought in the day Brienne Duncan had stomped into his life, and double that from the woman herself. The total sum would keep him for at least a month, two if he were prudent and ate at the boarding house, where plentiful-yet-mediocre meals were included in his rent, instead of the hotel. And if he kept his night's drinking to a single bourbon rather than the three or four he typically enjoyed.

_At least I don't have to pay for Ros._

Except, it turned out, that he did.

He arrived in good time, returning to the boarding house to drop off his bag and get some dinner from Miz Uller, who watched him appraisingly as he ate. Then he went to the bank and deposited the majority of the money he had on himself, as it was too large a sum to safely carry around, especially in a place like Ghost Hill. He nodded at Bronn as he ambled past the sheriff's to the saloon, and once inside, requested Ros attend him right away.

"What is it, sugar?" she asked sleepily as she came down the stairs, deliciously rumpled in only a silk wrapper and her long, unbound russet-brown hair. The girls worked until dawn and tended to sleep until late in the day, so he'd woken her.

He drew her close, careful as he wound his right arm around her waist, puzzled when the usual crackle of attraction failed to flow between them but game to ignore its absence as a fluke.

"I want you," he murmured in his most seductive tones.

"It can't wait until tonight?" she protested, yawning as she slipped from his embrace.

_What?_ "No," he replied, his voice a bit sharper. He wasn't used to Ros or anyone else's disinterest when it came to bedding. "Right now."

"Fine, fine," she said, sounding tired, and led the way upstairs to her room. It was its usual untidy space, small and cluttered with discarded clothing, little pots of cosmetics and chipped dishes of hairpins scattered about. The dark wallpaper and heavy drapes gave it a claustrophobic tightness instead of the plush intimacy Jaime usually felt upon entering. Ros had made liberal use of a heavy scent to disguise a stale lingering of sex in the air, no doubt from her last client. For the first time since he'd begun turning exclusively to whores for his satisfaction Jaime felt a touch of distaste.

He ignored it and began to disrobe. It was slow going but Ros did not move to help him work his jacket or shirt over his bandaged hand, merely reclining on the bed and shutting her eyes as if to catch a few extra winks while he readied himself.

It was not precisely… inspiring. Jaime felt a dart of irritation, and the memory of Brienne's eager response, of her body rising to meet his as they kissed at Martell's castle, tried its damnedest to edge into the forefront of his attention. Ruthlessly, he brushed it aside and concentrated on fumbling his belt open.

"Oh," Ros said suddenly, "Petyr doesn't like that I give it to you for free. He says I have to charge you from now on or I'm out. So this will be the standard rate." She peeled open an eye to glance at him, then shut it again. "Sorry."

Jaime's eyes widened in absolute outrage. He hadn't paid for a whore even once in his life; his looks and charm had always guaranteed that his time with a fancy lady was on the house. Brienne's hostile words, when they'd met, floated through his mind once more. Beginnings of a paunch… leathery skin… silver in his beard…

_Had_ he reached an age where those looks, that charm, was no longer enough?

Ros opened her eyes again, saw him frozen in affront, and laughed. "Okay, sugar, one more free time, but after this…"

Only slightly mollified, Jaime began to wrestle with his trouser buttons again.

"Why don't I help you with that, sugar?" Ros purred, slinking off the bed to him. Her hands went to his waist to help with the buttons, but they ended up going elsewhere, as well. She lifted her face to his, ruby lips parted in anticipation of his kiss.

Her mouth was nearly as bold as her hands, her actions practiced and expert, and Jaime could not stop comparing them to the shy, inexperienced fumblings he'd received from Brienne. _Her _big hands had gripped him like she was afraid he'd leave her, her full lips cleaving to his as if she wanted to fuse them together for all time. She'd never touched him besides on his hands, arms, shoulders, and yet that had aroused him a thousandfold more than the skilled maneuvers of the woman who was beginning to show evidence of irritation.

"Honestly, Jaime, if you're not interested, why even try?" she demanded, releasing his apathetic cock. "I could be sleeping right now."

The day a woman considered fucking Jaime Lannister second choice to _sleeping_ was the day he never had her again.

"Never mind," he said, and began to pull his clothes back on, glad he hadn't removed his boots; they were a bitch to get back on with just the one hand. He yanked the shirt and waistcoat on, but didn't bother buttoning either, and just slung the jacket over his arm as he left, unable to keep from stomping down the stairs as he left the saloon.

"Don't be like that, sugar…" he heard Ros calling after him as he went.

Back at the boarding house, he went into his room and was a bit jolted by how shabby it was, how devoid of personality. There was nothing there to indicate it was where a person lived, impersonal and actually rather grim. Maybe he should look into renting a room in someone's house, somewhere a little nicer? He'd be stuck in one place for at least a month, or maybe two, depending on how his hand healed, and suddenly the idea of being in the boarding house for that time made him feel like fleeing out into the street.

A knock sounded on the door. He opened it to find Miz Uller standing there.

"So," she said without preamble, scrutinizing the fat wad of bandages swathing his hand, "I hear you won't be running any bounties for a while."

_Trust the small-town grapevine. _There were no secrets in any of the frontier villages he'd been to in his time in Dorne.

"Yep," he said, injecting the words with token wistfulness. "Looks like I'm out of operation for a month, at least."

"Hm." She peered down at his hand again. "Well, I'll be needing the rent for that month in advance, then."

Jaime gaped at her. "What? Why?" He'd been paying her on a weekly basis for the past year, since coming to Ghost Hill.

"If you're not bringing money in, how can I be sure you'll have it at the end of every week? No, I need my money now, so I know it'll be there and I won't be out."

Her logic was unquestionable, but it still stung to be star-and-stagged* by a woman who should know by that point that he could be trusted for it.

"Fine," he therefore replied coolly. "I'll have it to you by tomorrow."

"Fine," Miz Uller replied, equally coolly. "Tomorrow."

After that, the last thing Jaime wanted was to see her again, so he had dinner at the hotel despite his earlier determination to conserve his dragons.

As he strode down the street toward the hotel, a-quiver with righteous indignation, Bronn ambled from the jail. "How'd it go?" he asked lazily.

"Dandy," Jaime snapped.

Looking more like a smirk on legs than a man, Bronn drawled, "I see things went well with your homely lady."

Jaime did not break his pace in the least, fully intent on passing Bronn by without speaking, but he stopped in his tracks at the sheriff's next words.

"You might want to get out of town for a while. Tales of your heroism have been getting around. Got a feeling that pretty soon you'll be visited by former bounties wanting to thank you for your kind treatment in the past."

_Dammit_. He should have thought of that. But Brienne had kept him so off-balance in the last day that it was no surprise such a thing would slip his mind. He nodded his thanks to Bronn, and continued on.

Back at the boarding house after eating, he undressed and washed in the cold water he poured into the basin, skin pimpling from the chill, and then flopped down on the lumpy bed, its springs squealing in protest.

Everything about his life felt wrong. What had, only days earlier, been absolutely fine was now… not. He hated the tiny, remote town; hated its run-down hotel with its meager offerings— its selections ranging from 'breakfast', 'lunch', and 'dinner', with no options whatsoever— and hated the billows of dust that kicked up every time a mouse farted.

The threadbare boarding house was one step above squatting in some abandoned shack out in the bush, and perhaps even that would be preferable, since there wouldn't be anyone demanding a month's rent in advance. The saloon was a sad, dingy affair relying on darkness and shadows to disguise its squalid reality. And he'd been fooling himself that Ros and the other whores he'd known were his lovers; he was just another customer to them, simply one they hadn't charged.

Longing filled Jaime, then, for a place to live that was a home, somewhere he lived instead of merely slept. A place where the seat of his favorite chair formed to his ass from daily use, and his lover was his _lover_, someone who wanted him, cared for him, needed him, instead of just fucking him for free or, worse, for his coin. Someone who looked at him with blue eyes wide with wonder, and then hazy with passion, who tasted fresh and clean in her innocence when she kissed him, and touched him with eagerness, with hunger.

That same sense of fear, of panicky entrapment, that impulse to flee or snarl or bite to free himself, reared its unwelcome head, just as it had every time he'd thought of Brienne in terms of caring or need. Needing others had only resulted in pain and distress, so he'd stopped doing it.

A tiny but persistent part of him had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't the needing that hurt, but the people he'd needed anything _from_.

A somewhat larger, equally persistent part had a _not_-so-sneaking suspicion that if he asked Brienne for something, she'd give it to or get it for him, even if it killed her. Hells, he _hadn't_ asked her for a thing and she'd still put him up in the hotel, got him a maester, given him hundreds of dragons to tide him over until he could work again.

And what had he done in return? Almost nothing. Gone to Sunspear, rescued her from certain debauchery at the hands of Oberyn Martell and his paramour, and convinced her to give up her mad scheme. A single day's work, costing him only money she herself had given him.

But Jaime did not _need _Brienne, or anyone else, and hadn't for a decade. What he _needed _was somewhere to stay for the next month, until he was well enough to keep himself from being murdered by past bounties.

..._she_ needed a handsome, charming, exciting husband, despite her resignation that it was a terrible idea. But it had only been a terrible idea when it hadn't been Jaime, when her only options were between a seducer, a monster, and a madman. If _he _were the one playing the part, it could actually work. He was an excellent actor. He'd spent the first twenty years of his life pretending to be the perfect son and brother despite his miserable reality. He could pretend to do something he felt certain would be, at the very least, entertaining.

And he owed her for what she'd done for him. Lannisters always paid their debts, even Lannisters who had estranged themselves from the rest of the whole godsawful family.

And he had nothing else to do with himself for a month.

_And_ he couldn't stay in Ghost Hill.

_I'm going after her_, he thought. _Aren't I?_

Yes. He was.

* The Westerosi version of "nickle-and-dimed".


	13. Chapter 13

Brienne was _intensely_ glad when Hyle Hunt disembarked the ship at Greenstone, the main town of Estermont. She'd made her way to the captain's table for dinner, as agreed, only to find Mr. Hunt already there. He'd somehow weaseled an invitation and when he leaped to his feet to pull out a chair— conveniently located right beside his own— for her, she knew it was for the express purpose of trying to charm her into wedding him. She could practically see the dragon signs dancing in his canny brown eyes.

For a mad moment, she considered letting him. He was nowhere near the dashing fellow she'd hoped would dissuade Sansa from her mad plan to marry her off to this Tormund Giantsbane, but he was better than nothing.

…though not by much. He revealed himself to be a traveling salesman of brushes: hair brushes, curry combs for horses, scrub brushes for floors and buggies. His territory was comprised of Dorne and the Stormlands, and he was very proud to share the exciting news that he'd just been promoted to fourth-highest-ranking salesman in the region.

"How lovely for you," said Brienne with the exquisite politeness she only trotted out when truly on the verge of doing someone a bodily injury. No, she did not want to purchase any of his wares, though she was positive they were of the highest quality, "…and thank you ever so much for your kind offer, ser."

Thus it was a disgruntled Hyle Hunt who stomped down the gangway at Greenstone with nary a backward glance, having exhausted his supply of masculine charms with which to tempt his prey. Brienne watched him go with extreme pleasure, tension deflating from her like a pricked balloon.

"What a right proper fool," murmured Captain Seaworth from beside her, as he nodded at two of the crew to haul in the gangway. He had been observing the exodus of passengers with Brienne, and flashed her a mischievous grin when she gave a little jolt at his words. She had forgotten how plain-speaking he could be, at times.

"Yes," she murmured. "Right proper."

He patted her shoulder and left to get the ship underway once more. Brienne went to her cabin; it was late, after nine o'clock, and she felt fatigue pressing upon her with heavy weight. The ship would sail all night and arrive in Tarth early in the morning, so if she wanted any rest, she had to go get it right then.

She fell asleep swiftly and dreamed of being chased by giant hairbrushes, and was woken by a sunbeam falling directly on her face through the porthole. Blinking and squinting against the glare, she hauled herself out of the narrow berth and prepared for the day. Breakfast was a buttered roll and tea— _not_ coffee— and then with a fond farewell, she bid goodbye to Captain Seaworth before disembarking to Tarth's fair shores.

When her foot touched ground, Brienne paused a moment to take in her surroundings. Around her, Evenfall was its usual bustling self, with wagons and buggies trundling by as shopkeepers plied their wares and townspeople went about their day. Everything was tidy and in good repair, as it ought to have been, and everyone looked happy or at least not-unhappy. She felt a sense of accomplishment at this evidence she was doing well in governing her island. She might have bungled her mission in Dorne, but this… this she was good at.

"Cousin!" exclaimed Quentyn Tarth, a distant relation and a drover from Morne, a village on the seaward side of the island. He drew his wagon, empty but for several deposits left by the sheep he'd likely just have dropped off at the butcher's, to a halt in front of her. "Have a good trip? Everyone's been wondering what you've been up to."

"Yes, thank you," said Brienne with a smile, but offered no more details.

"Can I carry you up to the Hall?" he offered, clearly hoping the ride would loosen her tongue, but by the time she was climbing down in the Hall's dusty courtyard, she hadn't shared anything more than "Dorne is lovely, yes, with such fine weather!"

He drove off with a disgruntled expression and was forgotten by Brienne in an instant, because Old Aemma was barreling out the front door, apron flapping in the breeze and cheeks even pinker than Brienne's.

"You're back! Thank the gods," said Old Aemma. She snatched Brienne's valise before taking her arm in an iron grip and steering her into the castle.

Brienne was not worried; it was simply Old Aemma's way to be dramatic and bossy. She'd probably have been alarmed if Old Aemma were meek and quiet, in fact.

"Yes, thank you, it _is _nice to be home," she teased the other woman, who stopped abruptly to fix a feisty glare upon her lady.

"I'm glad _someone_ is happy to be here," she snapped. "Threshing's underway but there's been no one to organize the crew. You decided to have the sept repairs begun just before you left and the noise from it is driving everyone spare! Hammering all blessed day long! I hear it in my dreams, and so will you by week's end!"

"I see," said Brienne, biting her lip to keep from laughing. "What else has gone wrong in the four days I've been away?"

Old Aemma narrowed her faded blue eyes, suspicious that Brienne was mocking her. Brienne kept her most innocent expression plastered on her face, and it seemed to be convincing, because the other woman soon continued.

"Your guests arrived early," she stated, in the same grave tone and cadence one might announce 'the plague has arrived'. To Old Aemma, the plague was likely preferable.

Brienne stopped short. "What?" she breathed in horror. "_What?_"

But before Old Aemma could respond, a musical gasp sounded behind them, and Brienne spun around.

"Brienne!" exclaimed Sansa Clegane, hands clasped to her bosom in delight. "You're finally back!"

.

* * *

.

The next morning, instead of approaching Miz Uller with the next month's rent, Jaime packed his entire life into his battered old carpet bag, thanked her politely, and headed for the train.

"You headed out again already?" asked Bronn, slouching in the open doorway of the jail.

"Decided you had a good point, yesterday," said Jaime. He paused a moment, glad to put the heavy bag down in the dust at his feet. His left hand wasn't used to carrying such weight for so long, but with so much exercise, by the time his right was back up to snuff the left would be strong enough to lift a horse. "Heading somewhere a bit safer, for a while."

Bronn nodded. "Good luck," he said, and ambled back inside.

Jaime grinned as he continued his trek to the train platform. Bronn had not asked him where he was going, and Jaime took that as a near-admission of friendship: Bronn didn't want to know, because then he couldn't be tempted by whatever bribe was offered to him to spill Jaime's location to any who might come calling for vengeance.

The now-familiar journey passed peacefully, Jaime snoozing as he might. Upon arrival in Sunspear, he made his way to the Grand Allyrion and went directly to the main desk. There, he saw the clerk was the same fellow who the last time had looked at Jaime in a way usually only women did, with a sort of stunned hunger. Jaime smiled winningly at him and he blushed accordingly.

"One room, please," he requested.

"Certainly, ser," the clerk whispered, eyes huge, pupils blown. While he turned to the large pegboard behind him, upon which hung all the room keys not presently in use, Jaime leaned his elbow upon the desk and began to flip idly through the guest register.

"Ser," said the clerk, and a key dangled into his range of vision. "I'm afraid I have to ask you to stop," the clerk continued haltingly. "Guests aren't allowed to nose about the book. Management feels it's a violation of privacy, to see everyone's names and where they're from."

"Is that what I'm doing?" asked Jaime, permitting his voice to lower an octave, so it gained a rasp he'd learned women liked. This fellow seemed susceptible to him; perhaps he'd like it, as well. "Nosing about?"

The clerk gulped. "Y-yes, sir," he replied, having gone a little raspy himself.

Jaime steeled himself for his next action. When he reached out to take the key, he let his fingers brush against the clerk's, feeling the other man's trembling even at such a brief touch.

"I just wanted to take a glimpse at how my friend signed her name," he said amiably, gaze locking with the clerk's for a second longer than propriety dictated. "You remember her, surely? Extremely tall and striking young lady? That can't be against the rules, can it?"

"I— I— I could find it for you, and let you see just that?" the clerk whispered.

Jaime rewarded him with his best smile, the one that deepened his dimples. "I'd be grateful."

The clerk drew the guest register around to face himself and paged back a few turns, then traced his finger down the list of names until he came to one near the bottom. "There," he said, turning it back around for Jaime.

Jaime glanced down and saw that, instead of 'Miss Duncan' or 'Brienne Duncan', she'd used another name entirely: _Miss B. Tarth of Evenfall Hall, Tarth, Stormlands_ marched across the page in the genteel copperplate he recognized from the note she'd left when she'd departed Ghost Hill. Despite the neatness of the writing, however, it was smudged at the end, as if she'd been rushing instead of giving the ink the time it needed to dry.

She'd lied about her name, and he was nothing but proud that she had: it would have been terminally stupid to share her true identity with men who she did not know and could not afford to trust. It must have been a mistake, her using her real name in the guest book, or she hadn't imagined he— or Oberyn— would ever see it.

"Can I beg a favor?" he asked the clerk, looking up from the register through golden lashes and plastering his most seductive half-grin on his face. "What would it take to get you to smudge this line a little more? At least the last name and location?"

The clerk blinked. "Ser?"

Jaime leaned further in, until he was practically hanging over the desk, and ran his tongue over his lower lip. "It's just that the young lady has a gentleman caller she doesn't care for," he said, in the tone of a man imparting a dark secret to a confidant. "I wouldn't like for him to come by and see her name and where she lives, in case he tried to bother her."

The clerk drew himself up. "I would never let just _anyone _look at the register," he said, apparently forgetting that he had done that very thing.

"Oh, I know _you _wouldn't," purred Jaime, "but you can't be here all the time, no matter how dedicated you are to your post. Don't you leave sometimes? To eat dinner? Have a drink?" He paused, letting his gaze track down to the clerk's quivering lips and back up again to his mesmerized gray eyes. "Go to bed?"

The man stared at him, transfixed, putting Jaime in mind of an audience member watching a snake charmer's pet slink out of its basket. Jaime took advantage of his distraction to snag the pen from its nearby stand, swipe a slash across Brienne's name and location, then drag a fingertip through the ink, rendering the words illegible.

He dropped the pen back into the stand and straightened from his lazy slouch, beaming a smile at the mesmerized clerk while reaching for his wallet.

"You've been a big help," he said, reaching out for the man's hand, placing a folded dragon note— far too lavish a tip, but he felt bad for teasing the poor chap— into his palm before curling each finger individually around it. "Have a good evening, now, you hear?"

Jaime sauntered away, leaving the clerk to stew in frustrated desire and hoping it would at least take until Jaime was out of the hotel to realize that he hadn't followed through with the transaction of getting a room. When no protesting cry was made, and pleased with how smoothly that had been accomplished, he next went to the docks.

He learned that the next ship up the coast wasn't leaving for two days, and would cost far more than he could afford to spend. He had to prepare for the chance Brienne would be less happy to see him than he hoped, and retain enough money to hide out somewhere— somewhere cheap— for a month.

He had better luck— sort of— at the train station. A train on the North Dorne line was leaving in an hour, arriving at Yronwood at ten o'clock, long after dark. From there, the next morning, Jaime could catch the Stone line to Storm's End, and from there, the ferry to Tarth. Thank the gods it wasn't a longer trip, or he'd be in a less-than-fine mood when he finally arrived at his destination.

Jaime wandered off to find himself some dinner and was back at the station just in time to dash onboard the train as it was pulling out. He gazed out the window at the passing scenery until night fell and then was deathly bored until the elderly man sitting across from him offered a book to read. He gave it his best try, but it was a convoluted and depressing tale by some mad Saathian convinced that having epilepsy imparted magic powers and Jaime managed only an hour of it before giving up. He was very glad when they pulled into Yronwood.

Not far from the station was a cheap hotel, and once in his room, he propped a stiff-backed chair under the doorknob to keep the door secure, when the lock might not, and fell asleep. The next morning, he was up, bathed, dressed, and at the station not long after sunrise, steadfastly refusing to ponder why he might be feeling so cheerful and eager. It was merely because he was on his way to a nice safe place to rest and heal, he told himself sternly, and refused to let himself revisit the topic again.

By the time the train stopped in Grandview for the night, Jaime was wishing longingly for the mad Saathian's tale of mystical fits, because he'd never been so bored in his life. He'd have struck up conversation with someone except all the other passengers were themselves reading, or asleep, or tending unruly children, and thus his quest for discussion went unsatisfied. Twice, he'd gone to the lavatory and brought himself off just to relieve the dullness.

He had most certainly _not _thought of blue eyes or a freckled throat or eager kisses or warm hands while doing it. Not at all.

There was no hotel in Grandview, so small was it, only an inn in the style of old: a huge firelit taproom populated by locals, and over it, a half-dozen small rooms of questionable cleanliness. Jaime spared a moment to inspect the bed for companions of the insect variety but, finding none, went to sleep with surprising ease. Boredom somehow wearied him just as much as strenuous activity.

The next day, it was on to Storm's End. Jaime had been there before and found it a monument to rampant paranoia, much in the same vein as his own family's seat, or perhaps a cautionary tale: you did not need a castle to defend against enemies if you weren't so awful that you had enemies in the first place. It was a lesson his father and sister had never learned, alas.

It was very windy there, at the dock, as he awaited the ferry's arrival, and the waves were whipped into a foaming froth. Jaime was glad he had decent sea legs; it wouldn't do, to arrive on Brienne's doorstep green and puke-stained. Some of his fellow passengers could not say the same, to their sorrow, and would arrive in that very condition when they docked at Evenfall.

The only other person on the ferry who did not suffer from mal-de-mer was a fellow around his own age. He took one look at Jaime's hair and flung open his valise to reveal very few clothes and very many brushes, of all things.

"Our hair brushes have only the finest quality boar's hair!" the man claimed. "And a lifetime guarantee! You won't believe how many compliments you'll receive, on the smoothness and luster your hair will gain!"

Jaime, who had received quite a few compliments on his hair— and other parts— during his years, very much doubted it, but he had forgotten his brush back at Miz Uller's, so he purchased one of Mr. Hunt's, at the same time harboring hopes it would make the man leave him alone. But such luck was not to be his; Mr. Hunt seemed to find him a worthy companion, and spent the remainder of the four-hour voyage chattering on and on about… something. Something about a woman Mr. Hunt was planning on wooing. Jaime stopped listening after the first ten minutes. Mr. Hunt did produce a flask of decent-quality whisky, however, and was inclined to share, so Jaime forebore his prattling.

By the time they hove into Evenfall's port, Jaime was feeling decidedly cheerful. Not drunk by a long shot, but any nerves he might have possessed, to present himself at Brienne's home, had certainly been washed far away.

Once both feet were planted upon Evenfall's cobblestones, Jaime stood for a moment, studying the town. It was small and clean, with streets in good repair and prosperous-looking shops. Its people appeared happy. The streets were in excellent condition and there were no slops or refuse littering the gutters. There was even a street sweeper meandering along, removing any evidence that horses might have done some business of their own.

So where might he find the lady of Tarth? With a surname matching the island itself, she had to be its landed gentry, had she not? And rising from the tall bluff behind the town was… well, it was a castle, to be sure, but unlike any castle Jaime had ever seen. The stone wasn't the steel-gray basalt of gloomy old Storm's End, nor the taupe granite of Casterly Rock. No, it was pale, almost white, and it _sparkled_.

The structure was of modest size and well-proportioned, not so tall it looked spindly nor so wide it appeared squat. The windows were long and slender, pointed at the top. The architect had been generous with the machicolations, and if he weren't mistaken, the brickwork around them was rose-pink. The turrets were capped in steep roofs of deep blue slate, but the main tower rose above them and had only a crenelated ring at its summit, leaving it open to the air. Jaime was sure the view from it would be spectacular and wondered if he'd have to work hard to convince Brienne to let him go up there.

He'd begun walking toward it, making good time on his feet and better time once someone in a buggy stopped to offer him a lift.

"Carry you to the hall?" the old fellow offered, a quaint way of saying it, and Jaime amused himself for the ride by imagining the elderly man heaving Jaime across a frail shoulder and trudging up the inclining street. Once deposited at the front gate, Jaime thanked him and offered a few stags for his trouble, but the old man just shook his head and clucked to his horses to start moving again.

Jaime tilted his head back to take in the view. This close, he could see all the signs of life of a well-maintained structure, and the mess of it, too: this was a working castle, not just a lavish home or historical relic. He made his way across the courtyard to the tall main doors, dodging a small flock of chickens, a rogue goat intent on nibbling the hem of his jacket, and a half-dozen piles of manure. He set his good fist to the door and gave a brisk hammering.

"I'll get it!" could be heard faintly through the wood, in a familiar voice, and it made him grin.

And then the doors were swinging wide, and there stood Brienne herself, in her trousers and man's shirt and short hair and homely face and freckles. Her eyes, her extraordinary eyes, widened at the sight of him.

"Jaime," she breathed, and just like that, he felt like he was home.


	14. Chapter 14

Sansa was, as always, radiantly lovely, but impending motherhood had imparted her with an effulgence that made her seem impossibly beautiful. Her skin glowed, her hair shone, her eyes sparkled, and Brienne felt a bit dazed as the other woman approached but still managed to extend her arms for an embrace.

"I'm so, so happy to see you again!" Sansa burbled as she enfolded herself into Brienne's arms. She smelled of sugar and lemons, as always, and the apprehension Brienne had been feeling to see her again just melted away. Whatever problems Sansa brought with her, she was Brienne's closest friend and it was wonderful to see her again.

"You look wonderful," she said when they drew back. "You're feeling well? Everything is going as it should? Your trip was uneventful? I hope you didn't have any problems, travel can be hard on an expecting woman—"

"Everything is perfect," Sansa replied with a laugh. "The men doted on me so much, I wasn't allowed to do a thing the whole time. I'm glad to be here at last, maybe I'll be able to cut my own food, now."

It was always a shock to encounter the tender side of Sandor Clegane, who looked as if he ate a barrel of nails for breakfast each morning, but the man looked at his wife as if the sun rose and set because of her. Brienne was sure she did not want that extreme of devotion aimed in her direction, but perhaps a lesser variation…?

"Sansa, you said your friend was striking, but you never told me she was glorious!" exclaimed a hearty male voice, and Brienne drew back in alarm, searching for whoever might have said such a ludicrous thing.

Down the hall, behind Sansa, a stranger had exited the parlor and stood there, apparently awestruck at the sight of Brienne. He had a wild bristle of red beard at his chin and a matching ginger shock on his head, and his gaze was wide with delight as he ran it over Brienne's substantial form.

"You needn't look so horrified," Sansa whispered as the man approached. "He's quite harmless and I assure you, his admiration is genuine. He is very honest and would not give empty flattery."

Brienne only had time to blink in surprise before he arrived before them.

"Tormund Giantsbane, ma'am," he said, pressing her hand between two big ruddy paws and gazing soulfully into her eyes. "I confess, at first I only came along with Sandor and his missus to keep them company and help if it were needed—"

"It wasn't," grumbled a deep voice that Brienne recognized as belonging to Sansa's husband. "Told you to stay back a dozen times."

"—but now I know how wise Sansa is, how right she was to sing your praises the whole trip south," Mr. Giantsbane concluded. "It would please me greatly if you'd walk out with me, ma'am."

Brienne flicked her gaze from him to Sansa, disbelief plain in her expression. Sansa only dimpled mischievously, and Brienne felt a tide of nostalgia for Dorne, much preferring to have been dodging Martells in Sunspear or even choking on clouds of dust in dingy little Ghost Hill.

_Jaime_, she thought with longing, and sighed.

"Before she agrees to anything," Sansa interjected, "she has yet to greet my Sandor and someone else who came with us."

She threaded her slim little arm through Brienne's thick, muscular one and drew her around Mr. Giantsbane and down the hall to the parlor.

Within the space was Sandor Clegane, his massive form dwarfing her father's wing chair by the fireplace, long legs stretched out and reaching halfway across the not-small room. He got to his feet at the women's entrance, though reluctantly— not one for polite gestures, was Sandor— and Brienne had drawn in a breath to welcome him when another man stood from the settee over by the pie-crust table.

"Is that— Jory?" she said, eyes widening with shock. Yes, it was Jory Cassel, second groundskeeper of Winterfell Estate. "What a surprise to find you here!" she exclaimed after a moment, going to him, hands outstretched.

He took her hands in his own. "A pleasant one, I hope," he said, smiling up at her; though not a short man, still he was no match for her height.

"Of course it is!" She had enjoyed their acquaintanceship warming to friendship in the last few years, spending quite a lot of time with him during her recent visits. She liked gardening; it was peaceful, and she enjoyed the outdoors. Jory had been excellent company when she felt the desire to have soil in her hands. "But what brings you here with Sansa and Sandor and Mr. Giantsbane? Surely there was no more need for help or protection with those two."

"Wasn't a need for it with just me alone," muttered Sandor. He swiped another cookie from the plate laden with them and tucked it, whole, into his mouth.

"No, I felt the need to see a bit of the world," Jory replied. "After you left Winterfell in the spring, it struck me that I've seen blessed little of the country… hadn't ever left the north but once, and that hadn't been for pleasure. I thought that perhaps the Cleganes wouldn't mind another in their little group, and hoped you wouldn't mind having me as a guest here, too."

"I don't mind at all!" Brienne said, smiling. At first she went to hide her teeth, as usual, but recalling how Jaime had told her not to be ashamed of herself, she thought Jory in his kindness would not be too repelled to see the state of them and let her hand drop. He seemed surprised but pleased, his own smile widening.

"Have you been here long?" she said then, her tone becoming more businesslike as she turned to face the rest of her guests. She began to unbutton her jacket. "I apologize for not being here when you arrived, but you anticipated me by several days. I thought I would have more time to make it back before you got here."

"We arrived yesterday," Sansa soothed, taking the jacket— snatched from her by Sandor and handed off to Old Aemma, who stood by with a disapproving expression— and smoothed down Brienne's wrinkled sleeve. "We couldn't go by ship— I have developed a crippling _mal-de-mer_ the moment I step foot on a boat, I fear— so we took the train and it made excellent time, for once—"

She beamed at Old Aemma, unphased when the other woman merely glowered at her.

"—and your staff has been very welcoming and pleasant," Sansa concluded, and seemed to honestly think that was the case, that Old Aemma was thrilled to accommodate and tend to four additional people at short notice. She always saw the best of others. Brienne was very glad Sansa had Sandor to watch out for her, if Brienne could not. However naive she herself might be, Sansa was tenfold more so.

"Very good," said Brienne, catching Old Aemma's eye and giving her a severe look that said _be polite_ and _is there enough for dinner?_ and _I hope you aired out the other guest rooms before putting Jory and Mr. Giantsbane in them_.

Old Aemma's scowl replied _I'd like to see you make me_ and _just barely, if I get some fish from the market within the hour_ and _of course, I'm not a savage_.

"I hope you'll all excuse me for a brief while," Brienne told them. "I've just returned from a bit of a journey and need to make myself presentable."

"Don't bother on our account," boomed Mr. Giantsbane. "I like you windblown and dusty."

Brienne shot Sansa an incredulous look; Sansa only returned an impish grin that seemed, impossibly, to find him charming instead of peculiar and verging on inappropriate.

"You'll probably be more comfortable tidied up," said Jory with a sympathetic smile, kindly as always. Brienne realized in horror that he was aware of Mr. Giantsbane's purpose in accompanying them to Tarth and felt her cheeks bloom with heat.

She hastened to turn away. "Old Aemma will get you anything you need while I'm at it. Please excuse me."

"Of course!" Sansa said while Brienne shot Old Aemma one last warning glare and departed for her room.

It was at the top of the square tower by her choice. The vista was unparalleled anywhere on the island, making her feel as if she could survey the whole of her domain at the same time. For once, however, she did not pause to appreciate it, hurrying instead to strip off her traveling suit, wash off the worst of her journey, and re-dress. She had a moment's quandary of what to wear; ought she to put on something more appropriately feminine? Mr. Martell had responded favorably— too favorably— when she'd worn a skirt and frilly blouse…

…but Jaime had responded favorably regardless of whether she was in a skirt or her preferred trousers. She decided that if Mr. Giantsbane were offended by her wearing of masculine attire, he was not the husband for her, and stepped into a pair of gray britches, her tall and well-worn boots, and one of her father's old shirts. She conceded to a thick brown belt to cinch the waist, however, and swiped wet hands through her tumbled hair to tame it before giving it a hasty brushing and braiding. Soon, she was descending the many steps to rejoin her guests.

She found they had wandered out of the parlor onto the parapet ringing the exterior of that level of the castle and stood taking in the view. Sansa was tucked protectively into the circle of Sandor's big arm to shield her from, presumably, any bandits who might suddenly present themselves.

"I hope you have enjoyed your stay so far," Brienne said, "though I can't imagine what you've found to entertain yourselves." She offered a mildly deprecating smile. "We don't have much in the way of excitement here."

"That's part of the charm!" announced Mr. Giantsbane. "I usually spend most of my time trying to keep bears from eating me, so having nothing much to do is a rare treat!"

Brienne blinked. "Well," she said after a moment, "since we're at no risk of becoming a bear's dinner, we must find something else to divert us."

And she had no idea what that might be. Sansa's condition precluded her from engaging in a brisk— or even a not-so-brisk— hike around the mountain, or a swim in the bay's churning waters. They could make a trip into town, but the drive would take longer than the visitation of the shops, so small was Evenfall. That was sure to be boring to Sansa and vexing to the men.

"Didn't you say there was that thing you wanted to show me?" Jory asked her suddenly. "Last time you were at Winterfell?"

Brienne stared blankly at him until she realized he was offering her an escape, albeit only a brief one.

"I did, yes!" she exclaimed with gratitude. "If the rest of you will excuse us…?"

And she bolted down the stairs leading to the inner bailey, Jory hard on her heels if the sound of his close footsteps were any indication. She led him through the gate to the outer bailey, where the sheep were lazy and swaying in the late morning sunlight and the lambs played and tried to climb the low stone walls.

"Thank you!" she told him, a trifle breathless from their dash. "I knew he was coming with them but I didn't realize he would be so… so much."

Jory laughed. "It's been quite an experience, traveling here with him. He's not a bad sort, just… a lot."

Shyly, hesitantly, she continued, "Sansa wants me to marry him. And I can already tell that— that it would be impossible."

No need to tell him about Jaime. Jaime would be her very own secret, held close to her heart.

Jory nodded. "I could tell the moment I met him that he wouldn't suit you. That was the reason I joined them to come here, really."

Brienne frowned, puzzled. What did he mean?

"When I learned that Miss Sansa was bringing Tormund with them when they went south, specifically to introduce him to you, I didn't like it," said Jory. "I knew you wouldn't like it, either. So I figured if you were feeling pressured to marry, to have children, for Tarth, you should have a choice. For practical reasons, if not affectionate ones. So I thought you might consider an alternative."

She shielded her eyes from the sun and peered at him, trying to figure out his meaning, but he looked as he ever did, kind and pleasant and decent, with no hint of any explanation for his words.

"I have been in love with you for several years now," he said, and her mind juddered to a halt.

_What?_

He smiled at her astonishment. "I must be very good at hiding it."

"You are," she agreed numbly. "_Very_ good. I had no idea." She squinted at him in confusion. "Are you sure?"

"Quite sure," he said with a laugh. "It… crept up on me, I suppose you could say. I thought, at first, that I just liked you, admired you, respected you. That you were my valued friend. And then, when you were at Winterfell only a few months ago, I realized that never before have I wanted to kiss and hold my other friends. Just you." He gave her a rueful smile. "I'm slow to understand things, sometimes. I shouldn't have let you leave without telling you. I thought I'd have time, that I could just wait until you returned next year.

"But when Miss Sansa began making plans to travel here, and bring Tormund along… I knew, then, that my time had run out. The next time you came to Winterfell, you could be married to another man. I had to come as well. I couldn't let it go, let _you _go, without trying."

He turned his dark eyes up to her, and she saw the same lambent heat in them that she had seen in Jaime's.

"You don't love me, I know that. But you like me. And maybe someday you could find that you love me, too."

_He wants me. Somehow, he actually wants me. _

"I would be good to you, Brienne. I would be so good to you," he finished.

"I can't leave Tarth," was all she could think to say in reply. She couldn't give up her ancestral home, not even for the sake of marrying and having a family.

"I know. I would never ask you to. I'd come here."

"And leave the north?" Brienne was agog at the notion. If there were one thing, one place, that Jory adored, it was his snowy homeland.

"To have you as my wife? To build a life, a family, here with you?" Jory gazed searchingly at her. "It would be a happy exchange."

Brienne's head was awhirl, and he must have seen something of her confusion, because he gave her another rueful smile and stepped back to lean against the sheepfold wall.

"I know I've just said a lot. I'm sorry to have shocked you so much. I won't speak of it again, unless you bring it up first."

She nodded. "Th-thank you. I will need some time to think about it. To understand it. To… to believe it. I had no idea." She flashed him a wobbly grin. "You really are good at hiding it!"

"Every man has his talents," he said with good humor. "Mine isn't very useful, though."

"Brienne?" Sansa called from a distance, and their heads turned toward the sound of it. "Jory?"

"Seems like our reprieve is over," Brienne said, feeling awkward, unsure how to behave with him now that their dynamic had altered so dramatically.

"We'd best go back," Jory agreed, and when they made to return to the castle, he put out an elbow for her to take.

She swallowed, awash with the memory of walking beside Jaime in the same way. When she slid her arm through his, she was so much taller that her hand was practically tucked into his armpit. He gave no sign of dissatisfaction, however, so she lifted her chin and walked alongside.

But she wished he were Jaime, and hated herself for it.

.

* * *

.

Jory's revelation, while shocking, was not unwelcome. Tormund's attentions, however, were _entirely _unwelcome. He was a boisterous man, uncouth and crass, seeming unaware that his repellent jokes and comments were not landing with success upon the target at which he had aimed them.

"Our children would be a marvel of the world," he said for the third time after dinner, while they sat with coffee and tea and biscuits. He raked a lingering glance over Brienne from top to toe and back up again. "They would be enormous. Mon—"

"Monstrous. Yes. So you've said already. Twice," Brienne interrupted him, unconcerned by that point if she offended him or not. She'd only spent several hours with the man and already she longed to see the last of him; a lifetime at his side was guaranteed to end in murder. In comparison, Jory shone brighter and brighter, to her baffled confusion.

Suddenly, she was exhausted and desperate for her own bed for the first time in nearly a week. She put her teacup down on the table and stood. Chairs clattered as the men stood as well.

"I'm sorry, I know I'm a terrible hostess, but… I'm so tired from traveling this week. Would you mind awfully if I went to bed early?"

"Of course not," Sansa replied. "We were just about done in, too, when we arrived. We'll have plenty of time to catch up properly over the next few days."

She stretched up on tiptoe to press a kiss to Brienne's cheek, beaming happily. Brienne kissed her in return, adroitly sidestepping Tormund's attempt to get a kiss of his own, before nodding to Sandor and smiling at Jory. Gratefully, she hurried at last from the parlor.

Instead of entering her bedroom at the top of the tower, however, she slipped up the tiny circular staircase. Each tread was worn concave in the middle from a thousand years of feet climbing them just as she did. It was a clear night, the moon shining bright over the island, and warm. Romantic, even, if she had a man to share it with.

_There are two men downstairs who would be more than pleased to share it,_ she thought, but the idea of either did not appeal. Tormund repulsed her on a variety of levels— if he used the word 'monstrous' again in relation to her or any children she might have, she'd not be responsible for her actions— and Jory's declaration had made her feel awkward and unsure.

She had no idea how to proceed with him. She did not want to lose his friendship, but if she were not able to forge a romantic attachment with him, she was lost as to how to interact with him. How did one behave with a man who cares for one, when one does not return the same level of his esteem? She was loath to hurt him, or make him feel rejected, but neither could she feign love when she did not feel it for him.

Though perhaps she could? With time, with exposure to him as a potential husband instead of merely as a friend? Perhaps if she'd ever entertained the concept of him as a lover, she would not now find it so sudden and bizarre and unlikely to think of him in that capacity. Perhaps over the duration of his stay at Evenfall Hall, she would be able to shift from their platonic rapport to one of love and attraction. If the way he had gazed at her, earlier, were any indication, it would be no conflict for him at all; the struggle would be all on her part.

Brienne barked out one of her loud, unladylike guffaws. Never in her life had she expected to be in such a quandary; it seemed an incomprehensible luxury, to be pursued by not one but two eligible gentlemen, and for at least one of them to genuinely seem to be in love with her. If anything, she'd thought _she _would be the one languishing for love, and the fellow inspiring it to be the one either oblivious or unreceptive to her desires. For it to be the other way around was— well, clearly not impossible, but… definitely unlikely, almost to that point.

And then there was Jaime. He did not love her, but she believed he had been attracted to her. Another curious and absurd thing that had somehow come to pass. There was no denying it; not even Brienne's incredulity, her dedicated conviction in her own lack of beauty, could overcome the knowledge of his want of her, nor of Jory's, nor even of Tormund's.

_Three_ _men_, she thought, pressing hands cool from the tower's stone to her flushed cheeks. _Three_.

She went down to her room and readied for bed, glad to exchange her clothing for a loose sleeveless shift and crawl into bed. She dreaded what the next day would bring, though there was a persistent little niggle of eagerness she could not quite suppress.

_Two_ suitors that day. Who knew what tomorrow might bring?


End file.
